


The Zoo

by unbirthdaydance



Category: SHINee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 03:53:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1967961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbirthdaydance/pseuds/unbirthdaydance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taemin finds solace from his failing marriage by visiting the strange new tiger at the zoo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Zoo

**Author's Note:**

> This was my 2014 SHINee Big Bang entry! also, the quoted lyrics are from Passenger’s Let Her Go (and also you should listen to [Within Temptation's cover of it](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwRV_DG4R2U), b/c I listened to both songs on repeat for hours while writing this lmao)
> 
> **Warnings:** infidelity, mpreg, character death, depression, suicide attempt, dystopia au

* * *

_staring at the bottom of the glass  
hoping one day you'll make a dream last  
but dreams come slow and they go so fast_

_you see her when you close your eyes  
maybe one day you'll understand why  
everything you touch surely dies_

~~~

It was a Wednesday morning and, just like always, Taemin was at the zoo.  
  
He went to the zoo every Wednesday and Friday morning. He chose the mornings because they were chill and crisp and usually not very busy. Sometimes they  _were_  busy. This tended to happen in the summer when camps of small children were bused into the place by the horde.  
  
The zoo-worker at the front entrance knew him. This worker changed every so often, whenever the job shifts rotated, but each new worker soon came to know him as well. Taemin went to the zoo like clockwork on his Wednesday and Friday mornings, because that was part of his schedule, and he had little else to do.  
  
The zoo trips were the highlight of his week, if he were being honest with himself, which in truth he rarely was. The sight of the animals pacing behind the confines of their bars and wires soothed some itch deep in Taemin’s soul. They looked so very alive, imprisoned though they were, which made Taemin feel as if it were possible for him to be alive too, imprisoned though he was.  
  
This Wednesday, they had a new animal at the zoo. It was a tiger, huge and orange and fierce. Taemin leaned against the railing and stared through the glass enclosure at the beast. The tiger wasn’t moving now. It sat lazing in the sunlight, either very bored or very depressed, and really, there wasn’t much difference between the two.  
  
The tiger was pretty. More than pretty, for  _pretty_  wasn’t word enough to encompass the whole of the tiger’s sheer  _presence_ , unmoving though it was. Gorgeous, Taemin mused. He mulled adjectives about in his head. Stunning. Glorious. Magnificent.  
  
The tiger yawned, displaying a mouthful of sharp teeth. Taemin stared, fascinated, and couldn’t look away.

~~~

The memory of the tiger was still lurking in his head that night, rumbling softly through his mind as he started the preparations for dinner. Taemin was decent at cooking. He hadn’t always been. During the first few years of his marriage, he’d exploded more dishes than he’d managed to properly make.  
  
Boredom had taught him how to cook properly. Boredom had taught him a lot in general. People practiced many things when they had nothing else to do.  
  
Taemin timed the meal very well, like always. He was just setting it on the table when the door opened and Minho came in.  
  
“Hey,” said Minho. He wandered into the kitchen and smiled. Minho was always smiling, though it never reached his eyes. “What’s for dinner? It smells delicious.”  
  
“It is what it always is,” said Taemin. He didn’t smile, not even when Minho kissed his cheek in greeting. “How was work?”  
  
“The same,” said Minho. His smile faded away. “It’s always the same.”  
  
Taemin went to go deal with the rest of dinner. He didn’t feel any sympathy for his husband’s woes. At least Minho was allowed to work. Taemin wasn’t. He resented that.  
  
They ate in silence. There wasn’t anything to talk about. There wasn’t anything new. Taemin might have mentioned the tiger, but he didn’t feel like it. The tiger was fierce and special and  _his_. Taemin wanted to keep it in the cage of his mind and never share it with anyone.  
  
Minho cleaned up after dinner, partly because Taemin had cooked it and partly because Minho actually liked housework to some extent. Taemin left him to the dishes and went to turn the television on. He flipped through the news channels. They were all alike, the same old propaganda over and over again. Praise the Government and our Glorious Leader and pointless shit like that.  
  
Nobody listened to the news except fanatics. Taemin wasn’t a fanatic. He didn’t have the energy for it.  
  
Minho came and sat by him after a while. He cuddled into Taemin’s side like an affection-starved cat. Taemin put an arm around Minho and petted the side of his face. He wished they could get an actual cat, but Minho’s salary didn’t earn enough for luxuries like that.  
  
Thinking of cats turned his musings to the tiger. If Minho was a cat, he wasn’t a cat like the tiger. He was a housecat, just like Taemin, stale and domesticated. The tiger was  _wild_.  
  
“What are you thinking about?” Minho murmured, the flat of his cheek squished into Taemin’s shoulder. “You have a funny look in your eye.”  
  
Taemin shrugged. “Things,” he said vaguely. He itched suddenly to  _do_  something, and knew of only one way to assuage this restless urge. “Can I fuck you now?”  
  
Minho snorted, a sound of infinite weariness and exasperated judgment all rolled into one. But he let Taemin pin him to the couch anyway, and kiss him and touch him and bite him all over. They weren’t supposed to fuck like this, with Taemin in control, but Taemin  _needed_  the control, and Minho somehow never minded giving it up.  
  
When they were done, they were sticky and sweaty and not at all sated. Taemin breathed into the space of Minho’s collarbones and tried not to feel annoyed at the way Minho was stroking his hair.  
  
“I should go do work now,” Minho murmured. His fingers caught on a tangled knot. Taemin winced. “Sorry.”  
  
“It’s okay.”  
  
They didn’t move. Taemin was pretty sure Minho didn’t want to move. Minho needed attention and affection and comforting words. Taemin didn’t have enough of that for himself, let alone someone else. They were a bad match. The Government should never have assigned them together.  
  
But assign them together it had, and one just didn’t argue with the Government’s decisions.  
  
Taemin sighed. He kissed Minho’s neck and listened to his husband hum, quiet and content. Then he sat up and unmuted the television. After some time, Minho went away.

~~~

That night, Taemin dreamed of the tiger. Ferocious energy, feline eyes and a teasing smirk twined with his soul into something hot and fevered. He woke up hard and panting and utterly embarrassed. Tigers didn’t smirk. There was clearly something wrong with him.  
  
He rolled out of bed and jerked himself off. He determinedly pictured Minho’s face the entire time, and tried not to feel disturbed at the way his cock felt like rough orange fur beneath his palm.

~~~

He went to a rally on Thursday. He didn’t really want to go, for rallies were tedious affairs. You stood amongst a horde of other, equally disinterested people, waved flags and shouted slogans. Government officials made tedious repetitive speeches. Everyone sang the national songs. It was horrible.  
  
You couldn’t not go, however. The Government sent you a schedule of events in the mail every month, with the ones you were ordered to attend highlighted in slashes of cheerful yellow. Taemin had to go to more than Minho did, because Minho had to work during the day. Taemin didn’t have anything scheduled except housework, and that never took long enough.  
  
The central square was decorated for the rally. Brightly-colored ribbons were wound about banisters, statues and lampposts. Banners hung from the awnings of shops. Volunteers with wide fake smiles were handing out gift bags, flags and posters to hold up. There was an excess of candy for the little children. A troop of dancers whirled about the stage to entertain the crowds before the main event began.  
  
Taemin accepted his flag and gift bag, and allowed himself to be directed to his spot. He picked through the bag while he waited. It was full of random cheap items: a tiny bottle of hand soap, a candy cane, a magically-powered keychain flashlight, an  _I <3 My President_ window decal, a chocolate coin covered in golden foil with the national emblem imprinted on it.  
  
Taemin stuffed the bag into his jacket pocket. It was useless. Everything was useless. He had about fifty of the same window decal in their junk drawer at home.  
  
The rally began in earnest. Taemin waved the flag. He cheered. After about four hours of ostentatious nonsense, it ended. Taemin’s feet hurt from standing.  
  
He would go grocery shopping, he decided. Then make a quick stop at the dry-cleaners to pick up Minho’s shirts. And then- what?  
  
It was Thursday. It wasn’t a zoo day. Taemin decided to go anyway.

~~~

The tiger was pacing this time, a lazy sort of pacing, as if it simply couldn’t be bothered to exert a fraction more energy than was necessary to slink from one side of the enclosure to the other. It paid no visible attention to its onlooker, but Taemin had the uncanny feeling that he was being watched anyway.  
  
He went to read the tiger’s sign. It was drivel. All the animals’ signs were. This one said something about feline bone structures, species of tigers and mythical associations of tigers with dreaming. They had the tiger’s name engraved on a brass plaque just below the sign.  _KEY,_  it read, in big block letters. They named all the animals after such silly, mundane things.  
  
Taemin looked through the thick glass wall that separated him from the tiger. It still hadn’t stopped pacing.  
  
“You’re amazing,” Taemin said softly. He touched his fingertips to the glass.  
  
The tiger didn’t acknowledge him. Taemin felt silly. He pulled his hand back and made himself walk away.

~~~

Minho had a magazine about childcare that night. This wasn’t a good sign. Taemin made sure not to acknowledge the magazine at all. He didn’t need another fight about babies. Minho wanted one desperately and had since before they’d been assigned to marry. Taemin, however, absolutely did not want one, not even the slightest bit.  
  
It wasn’t that he didn’t like babies. He did. The problem was anatomical. Taemin had been assigned the role of homemaker in their marriage. It was thus his responsibility to carry any children, but Taemin did not like the idea of anyone messing with his reproductive systems. Never mind that the Government had very safe, very temporary procedures for that. Taemin didn’t like the idea. It made him feel nauseous and disturbed. He refused to go through with it.  
  
Minho might have done it, but he couldn’t. He’d been assigned the role of worker. Both of them felt that the roles were wrong, but one didn’t argue with the Government about these things. When they matched you up and assigned you your roles, you signed the forms and agreed. That was how everyone lived, with their mouths sealed shut.  
  
It was late evening when Minho finally dropped the magazine on Taemin’s lap and stood before him in the living room, blocking Taemin’s view of the television. Taemin’s jaw twitched. He didn’t like arguments. He didn’t like this argument in particular.  
  
“I found a doctor,” said Minho.  
  
Taemin shoved the magazine off his lap and onto the floor. Minho tensed. Taemin clenched his hands into fists and tried not to be angry.  
  
“I’m not doing it,” said Taemin. His voice was very strained. “I’ve told you five million times before-”  
  
“I know,” said Minho. His fingers picked nervously at the hem of his shirt. “ _I’m_  going to do it.”  
  
Taemin looked sharply up at him. Minho looked back. His eyes were very wide- though from what, Taemin couldn’t tell.  
  
“Are we talking about the same thing?” said Taemin. “You can’t get pregnant. It’s not your role.”  
  
“Fuck the roles,” said Minho. “Did you know that if the homemaker in a marriage has a severe enough medical problem, you can get permission for the worker to carry a baby?”  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” said Taemin. “You know that.”  
  
“We can pretend there is,” said Minho. His voice was very tight. “I found a doctor who said she’d fake a form for us. How do you feel about having a genetic predisposition to severe prostate cancer?”  
  
Taemin frowned. He didn’t know what to say to this. He didn’t know anyone who’d gotten permission to do something against their role. He didn’t even know what they would  _do_  with a baby. It would be very expensive to have one. Everything was expensive these days. Would they be able to pay for winter heating if they had to save for university tuition? That was assuming any hypothetical baby would get permission to attend university. They might not. Taemin hadn’t.  
  
“…Taemin?”  
  
Minho’s voice was very small and nervous. Taemin took a deep breath. Having a baby was a terrible idea, but it wouldn’t do at all to  _say_ so.  
  
“Please,” Minho added softly, desperately, perhaps sensing Taemin’s impending rejection. “I know I’m supposed to leave all that to you, but it’s not like we follow our roles in private anyway. I’d carry the baby, and I’d take care of it and make it easy on you. But I can’t start anything without you. I just- I need-”  
  
“Okay,” said Taemin. He didn’t look up. “Okay, fine, whatever. Let’s have a baby.”  
  
“Are you sure?” Minho’s voice was wary. “If you don’t want to-”  
  
“I don’t,” said Taemin. He pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s have one anyway.”  
  
“I don’t want to bring a child into this world and leave it in the care of a parent who doesn’t want it,” said Minho. His voice was still soft, but with an edge now, thinly veiled anger. “Either you agree to this whole-heartedly, or you don’t.”  
  
Taemin breathed out. He felt very hot all over, angry by reflex and unwilling to let it show.  
  
“We can’t afford a baby,” he said. “We’re not exactly high-level party members, in case you hadn’t noticed.”  
  
“Is  _that_  what you’re worried about?” said Minho incredulously. “Money? People poorer than us have children all the time, Taemin. We’ll make it work.”  
  
“Other people are better at things than I am,” said Taemin. He stared hard at the floor, eyes itchy. “They’re better at everything than I am.”  
  
There was a sudden silence. Taemin wished he hadn’t said anything. He didn’t like fighting with Minho. He didn’t like upsetting him. It made him feel all guilty and twisted inside, and he never knew what to  _do_  about that.  
  
“You’re good at things,” said Minho finally. “You’d be a good parent. I trust you.”  
  
Taemin’s eyes got itchier. He didn’t say anything. Minho didn’t say anything either. After some minutes of this silence, Minho quietly padded out.  
  
Taemin sat down again. He closed his eyes, exhausted, and dreamed of tiger cubs, fragile and angry and new.

~~~

He went to the zoo the next morning. The tiger was watching him this time, with sharp, dark tiger eyes. Taemin felt unexpectedly fluttery. He splayed one hand against the glass and leaned close.  
  
“Hey, pretty,” he called softly. “How are you today?”  
  
The tiger blinked and didn’t move. Taemin would have felt silly again, except that the magnificent creature was still staring at him, with a fixed and calculating gaze. It should have been terrifying, but maybe Taemin liked being terrified, because he couldn’t look away.  
  
He wondered how tigers had cubs. Presumably the same way humans did, but Taemin didn’t know for sure. None of the signs ever said. Perhaps instead tigers were manufactured somehow, just like the little animals sold as pets to those who could afford them.  
  
He let his hand fall away. The tiger laid down slowly, its stare never wavering. A chill sparked down Taemin’s spine.  
  
“I’m going to go now,” said Taemin. “I think I’ll go see the bears next.”  
  
The tiger didn’t look away. Taemin left.

~~~

The moment he left the safety of the zoo, he felt ill at ease again, full of bubbling anxiety about his and Minho’s conversation from last night. He ought to talk to someone about it, someone who knew what to say at times like this. Taemin had a few friends. He should go to them.  
  
He didn’t. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t  _want_  to know what to say. He went to talk to Jonghyun instead.  
  
Jonghyun wasn’t a friend, exactly. Half the time, Taemin wasn’t sure he even liked the guy, annoyingly insightful as he was. That didn’t matter. Jonghyun sold fruit at a vendor’s stall at the edge of the downtown market. The fruit was not delicious, but then, it wasn’t as if any street vendor could afford to stock anything better.  
  
“What’s up?” Jonghyun said now, watching as Taemin picked through rows of small apples. “Are you all right?”  
  
“I’m fine,” said Taemin. He chose three of the best apples. “How much are these?”  
  
Jonghyun ignored this.  
  
“I’m serious,” he said instead. “Have you and your husband been fighting again?”  
  
Taemin stared at him. “How…?”  
  
“You always buy apples when you fight,” Jonghyun said. He took the apples from Taemin and weighed them in a basket, the grams flickering in the air just above it. “What is it this time?”  
  
“Babies,” said Taemin. He might as well tell Jonghyun everything; the fruit vendor would have the whole tale out of him one way or the other eventually anyway. “Minho wants one.”  
  
“And you don’t?” Jonghyun raised an eyebrow at him, curious. “Why not?”  
  
“We can’t afford one,” said Taemin. He prodded at a bunch of grapes. “Besides, I’d just screw it up.” He sighed. “Everything is screwed up. Who’d want to bring a baby into this?”  
  
Jonghyun caught his wrist. Taemin looked at him, startled.  
  
“Not everything is screwed up,” Jonghyun said. He favored Taemin with his brightest, most obnoxiously adorable smile. “I’m not.”  
  
Taemin left off with the grapes. “That’s what you think.”  
  
“Rude.” Jonghyun didn’t sound offended, though. This was probably because he never took Taemin’s attitude seriously. “Do you want anything besides these apples?”  
  
Taemin didn’t. He paid for them and bid Jonghyun farewell. The memory of the fruit vendor’s smile lingered in his mind for a while afterwards. Minho had used to smile somewhat like that years ago, all sweet and innocent and determined. Taemin missed it.  
  
He crunched into an apple on the walk to the subway. A baby might smile like that, at least for a little while. It might make Minho smile like that again too.

~~~

“I don’t know her name,” said Minho that night. He looked cautiously hopeful, perhaps sensing that Taemin’s asking about this doctor meant a shift in his attitude towards the prospect of a baby. “But a friend of a friend recommended her to me. She recently got reassigned to work at a family clinic near here, and she’s apparently really nice and very professional.”  
  
“Is she trustworthy? You know what would happen if we got caught doing this. We could get taken away to who knows where and killed, just like everyone else who-”  
  
“We can trust her,” said Minho. “Besides, she’d get punished too if she were caught helping us.”  
  
“She could be a spy.”  
  
“I think spies have better things to do than pretend to help people have babies, Taemin.”  
  
Taemin pressed his lips together. His mouth felt dry and sour, like bad apples. He ran his tongue over the back of his teeth and imagined hot, raw meat instead. Tiger food.  
  
“Can we go talk to her?” Taemin asked finally. “Not… decide anything. Not yet. But just talk to her?”  
  
Minho’s eyes softened. “Sure. You want to go tomorrow?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“All right.” Minho smiled. There was a little anticipatory sparkle in his eyes. “Sweet. Thank you, babe.”  
  
Taemin got to his feet. “Don’t call me that,” he said, the pet name festering in his eardrums. “And don’t thank me yet. I might still say no.”

~~~

He dreamed of the tiger again that night. It was on the hunt, prowling through a forest of sweltering red. Taemin fisted his fingers in its fur, and the tiger hunted him, all that vicious energy focused on a single point and burning him from the inside out.  
  
He woke up hard again, body wet and sweaty. There was something very wrong with him, he thought, if he was having sex dreams about a  _tiger_  of all things.  
  
He rolled over and kissed Minho awake. His husband submitted sleepily to Taemin’s insistent need, yawning into Taemin’s mouth and fingers curling absently against Taemin’s shoulders.  
  
The entire thing felt unreal, detached, as if he were flipping through some contraband X-rated magazine instead of making love to his husband of six years. Taemin curled into Minho’s side afterward and listened as Minho’s breaths turned gradually into loud snores. He thought of the growling of a tiger and growled himself, frustrated.  
  
Somehow, he fell asleep.

~~~

The doctor was something of a surprise.  
  
“Call me Gwiboon,” she said, upon first greeting them in the clinic lobby. “No need to be formal here. Minho, I presume, and your Taemin?”  
  
“Yes,” said Minho. He had his hand on the small of Taemin’s back, very proper and courteous, a worker attentive to his spouse’s every need. “Can we talk in private?”  
  
“Of course,” said Gwiboon immediately. “Here, my office is this way.”  
  
They followed her to the office. It was small and cramped with half-unpacked boxes everywhere, kicked into dusty corners. The doctor had them sit in plastic fold-out chairs across the faux-wooden desk. It was very sketchy, but that was fine. Neither of them was actually ill.  
  
Gwiboon listened to their story in polite silence. Taemin couldn’t keep his eyes off her, for she was all dark curls and cheekbones and distracting curves. Despite her professional demeanor, there was something almost wild about her. Perhaps it was because her eyes had a feline fierceness to them which reminded Taemin of the tiger, coiled and ready to pounce.  
  
“If you decide to go through with this, I’ll help you, of course,” said Gwiboon, once Minho had finished speaking. “I’ve always found some of the restrictions imposed on us to be a bit, ah,  _nonsensical_ , if you will.”  
  
Taemin glanced surreptitiously at the door, but no one seemed to be listening in. Of course, that didn’t mean anything about any electro-magical bugs which might be hidden in the room.  
  
Gwiboon caught his glance and smiled reassuringly.  
  
“I realize it might be difficult for you to trust me,” she said. “Please, take the time you need to decide whether or not to go through with this. Bringing a baby safely into this world is a very serious affair.”  
  
Taemin looked at Minho. Minho looked back. His eyes were very wide, and the line of his jaw was very tense. Taemin wanted to touch it and smooth the tension away with his fingertips and the scrape of a fingernail.  
  
He didn’t. Instead, he took a slow, bracing breath and finally came to a decision.  
  
“I guess I’m okay with having a baby,” Taemin said. He looked back at Gwiboon, away from Minho’s delighted smile of surprise. “I’m just worried about the cost.”  
  
“A valid concern indeed,” said Gwiboon. She shuffled some papers about, then produced a pamphlet which she handed to Minho. “The procedure you seek is very expensive, and most insurance doesn’t cover it.”  
  
Minho leafed through the pamphlet. Taemin peered over Minho’s shoulder at it. There was a chart with costs and payments listed in sharp detail.  _Expensive_  was an understatement indeed.  
  
“We might have to save for a while before we can go through with this,” Minho said. His voice was quiet with disappointment. “I mean, I knew it would cost a lot, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so  _much_ -”  
  
“Take your time,” said Gwiboon again. She smiled, a strange, edgy smile. “But don’t take too long; I don’t know how much longer I’ll be assigned here.”  
  
Minho nodded, still distracted with the pamphlet. Gwiboon’s gaze locked with Taemin’s. She smiled wider, almost a grin, and Taemin found himself thinking of tigers again, and bright white fangs.  
  
“Thank you for helping us,” Taemin said, to break the silence. “It’s very kind of you.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” said Gwiboon. Her voice deepened into a husky purr. “It’s my pleasure.”  
  
Those pretty, dark eyes glittered at him from across the doctor’s desk. Taemin swallowed hard, and tried to ignore how fast his heart was beating.

~~~

Monday came. It wasn’t a day Taemin usually went to the zoo, but he felt he needed to. They’d gone over their household budget all weekend, looking for ways to save for the possibility of the procedure. Minho had been full of strange energy the whole time, and Taemin didn’t know what to make of it. He half-wanted to take his tentative agreement back, but couldn’t bring himself to crush the sudden weird delight in Minho’s eyes.  
  
The tiger cage was being cleaned today. Taemin leaned against the glass, disappointed to see a zookeeper and nothing more in the wide enclosure.  
  
The keeper looked over at him and waved. Taemin bemusedly waved back.  
  
“Hello!” the keeper called, bright and sing-song. “I’ll be done shortly, and then I’ll let the beast back in. Fantastic weather, isn’t it? Like tigers, do you? I’m Jinki, by the way.”  
  
“I’m Taemin,” said Taemin, taken aback by the sudden flood of chatter. “The weather is very nice, yeah. And I’ve never seen a tiger besides this one before.”  
  
“They’re very rare,” said Jinki. He winked, even as he wrestled with stuffing a slab of raw meat into a tree, presumably to provide a ‘hunt’ for the tiger later. “Funny sort of creatures, tigers. This one’s funnier than most.”  
  
“Mm-hmm,” Taemin hummed. He watched as Jinki arched up on his tiptoes to struggle with the meat. “Do you like tigers?”  
  
“I like this one,” said Jinki. He hummed happily a second later, having succeeded in his task. “They named him Key, did you know? Very apt.”  
  
“I’ve been dreaming about it,” said Taemin suddenly. He didn’t know why he felt compelled all of a sudden to share his tiger dreams with some random zookeeper he didn’t even know, but he did. “Very  _strange_  dreams.”  
  
Jinki cast him a knowing, shrewd look out of the corner of one eye.  
  
“Tigers will do that,” he said. “I’d be careful about it, if I were you. They cage them for a reason.”  
  
Taemin frowned. Jinki grinned and sauntered off, whistling a merry tune as he did so. Not five minutes later, the tiger strolled in, all casual, predatory grace.  
  
“Key,” said Taemin experimentally, staring at the thing. “Hello.”  
  
The tiger flicked its tail disdainfully and flopped into the shade of the tree with the meat in it. It gave no sign that it had even noticed the meat which Jinki had so painstakingly put there.  
  
Taemin got the impression that this was a distinctly tiger-like thing to do.

~~~

The next several weeks were hell.  
  
Minho wouldn’t be quiet about the baby issue, not now that he’d gotten Taemin to at least consider acquiescing to the idea. Childcare magazines piled up everywhere around their place, Minho went endlessly on and on about ways they could scrimp and save money, and that awful pamphlet became dog-eared from frequent reading.  
  
Minho seemed quite pleased with life, for once. Taemin tried to feel pleased as well. It was difficult. Now that the possibility of a baby was increasingly real, a growing list of potential problems began to blossom in Taemin’s mind. There would be yet another person in the apartment he’d have to pretend to be all right around, for one.  
  
“We should start making up designs for a nursery,” said Minho one day. “Can we make it yellow? I like yellow. A pale yellow, maybe, nothing  _neon_ …”  
  
Taemin hated yellow. He kept his mouth shut, but of course Minho noticed anyway.  
  
“Aren’t you happy about this?” said Minho. He frowned at Taemin. “You said you were all right discussing the idea, you can’t get nerves  _now_ -”  
  
“Watch me,” Taemin snapped.  
  
He turned on his heel and stalked off into the kitchen. He felt terrible the moment he slumped against the refrigerator, leaning his forehead against the cool, rippled plastic of its surface. He was a terrible husband. Good husbands didn’t feel trapped by their spouse’s pleasure.  
  
 _I want out_ , Taemin thought. He stared cross-eyed at the refrigerator.  _There is no way out_.  
  
At least tigers didn’t realize they were trapped. It might be nice to be a tiger.

~~~

“You’ve been buying a lot of apples recently,” said Jonghyun. His eyes were very concerned. “Are you and Minho all right?”  
  
“We’re fine,” said Taemin. He dropped a pear into the basket, just to be contrary. “Why wouldn’t we be fine?”  
  
Jonghyun raised an eyebrow at him. “You’ve been getting progressively grumpier these past few weeks too, you know.”  
  
Taemin ignored this, choosing instead to examine another pear, checking for mushy spots. They had gone back to visit Gwiboon again the other day, to talk over specific procedures. Taemin had left most of this talking to Minho, too distracted by the arch of the pretty doctor’s throat to pay attention to the irritating details of magical medical procedures.  
  
It was alarming how easily he lost focus around her, but Taemin couldn’t help it. She was a vivid splash of color in an otherwise gray world, impossible to look away from and too fascinating not to contemplate.  
  
“…Taemin? Hey, Taemin!”  
  
Taemin sighed and handed Jonghyun the basket. “That’s it for now.”  
  
Jonghyun didn’t weigh the fruit immediately. “You sure everything’s all right? You can vent to me about anything, you realize.”  
  
“I know.” Taemin fiddled with a cluster of cherries he didn’t want. “I’m fine.”  
  
It was Jonghyun’s turn to sigh. Taemin rubbed one fingertip over a cherry’s red surface, as beautifully crimson as Gwiboon’s lipstick had been the last time he’d seen her. The raw and bloody steak he’d seen the zookeeper hide for the tiger had been almost equally as red.  
  
Taemin caught himself wondering if Gwiboon’s mouth tasted like blood, and promptly decided that the stress of this whole baby thing was definitely getting to him in very weird ways indeed.

~~~

His routine changed. He went to the zoo almost every day now, not just Wednesday and Friday mornings. Sometimes the tiger did things, and sometimes it didn’t. Taemin liked the days where it got up and prowled around its enclosure much more than the days where it did nothing but lay snoozing in the winter sun.  
  
Sometimes the tiger prowled right up to the glass wall separating the little viewing shelter from the enclosure main. Taemin knelt down and pressed his nose against the glass to stare the tiger right in the eye, his face separated from the tiger’s massive head by only a few inches of glass.  
  
He wanted the glass to crack and shatter, to touch the tiger for real. This was definitely a bad idea, but he couldn’t help wanting it anyway. His dreams were often full of coarse orange fur and several hundred pounds of rippling muscle; Taemin wanted to know if the dream-sensations were true.  
  
The tiger most often ended these staring sessions by yawning and wandering away. Its tail would wave in the air as it did so, a gesture almost a taunt. Taemin had the feeling that the tiger was challenging him somehow, but to do what, he never knew.

~~~

Minho had been oddly cheerful lately. Taemin didn’t think anything of it. He knew how badly Minho had wanted to win the baby argument, and now that he finally almost had, it was only natural that he be annoyingly excited all the time. Taemin didn’t want to think about babies at all. They still hadn’t saved up enough for the procedure and likely wouldn’t for at least a year. Taemin didn’t see the point in dwelling on the issue until then.  
  
Minho didn’t bother him overmuch about the impending baby discussion, much to Taemin’s relief. Minho didn’t bother him much at all, his initial insistence on discussing all things childcare with Taemin having faded away as the weeks went by. He spent more time at work than usual, and occupied himself with reading up all the information on medical magic he was permitted to access at the local library.  
  
Taemin refused to allow himself to feel lonely at how often Minho was increasingly gone, either at work, the library or the doctor’s clinic. There was a happy sparkle in Minho’s eyes now that Taemin hadn’t seen in years. That was worth any amount of Taemin eating dinner by himself, watching the news with a blank stare and daydreaming of tigers in the wild.

~~~

“You shouldn’t come here this often,” said Jinki the zookeeper. He was cleaning the tiger’s cage again, his usually sunny expression today very serious. “It’s dangerous.”  
  
Taemin ignored this. It was a zoo; surely it didn’t matter how frequently he now came to stand here and watch the tiger.  
  
“I mean it,” said Jinki. He was clutching his rake very tightly in his hands. “Tigers are very dangerous creatures.”  
  
Taemin shrugged. “It’s caged up in this enclosure,” he said. “It can’t hurt me.”  
  
Jinki just sighed and bowed his head, then returned to his task. Taemin waited, the eager need to see the tiger burning higher and higher inside him. He’d always soothed the restlessness in his soul before by having sex with his husband, but Minho had been distant recently, bored and almost resigned during their lovemaking. The tiger had thus become the best way to quiet that incessant itch of dissatisfaction deep within. No zookeeper’s silly caution would keep Taemin away from the animal now. He needed the subtle thrill of its presence far too much.  
  
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Jinki muttered, eyes cast anxiously down at the ground.  
  
Taemin didn’t listen. He never did.

~~~

Jonghyun had a lot of new fruit today. Taemin picked through the colorful offerings, interest piqued by the sight of things he’d never even heard of before.  
  
“I got a good deal out of the imports office,” said Jonghyun smugly, watching Taemin’s curiosity with no small amount of pride. “There was a surplus of exotic fruit because someone fucked up the transport spells, so I managed to get some of the extra pretty cheap. That’s a mango,” he added, pointing to a yellowish fruit. “And those are plantains, and that’s a starfruit, and  _that’s_  a bitter gourd; I’ve heard they taste awful, don’t buy them.”  
  
“Thanks,” said Taemin. The starfruit looked neat and sounded cool. He chose three. “I don’t know how to cook any of these.”  
  
“I do,” said Jonghyun. “Kind of, anyway. You want me to lend you a cookbook?”  
  
Taemin turned a guava over in his hand. “I’m not good at cooking things at first try,” he said absently. “You want to visit me tonight and help me out in person instead?”  
  
There was a surprised silence. Taemin put the guava down and looked over at Jonghyun.  
  
“Sure,” said Jonghyun. His eyes crinkled into a pleased smile. “If you think that’s alright with your husband, that is, I don’t want to be awkward-”  
  
“Minho’s never home much now,” said Taemin. He poked at a plastic box of cranberries. “And he wouldn’t mind anyway. He’s nice; you’d like him.”  
  
“If you say so,” said Jonghyun. He began packing Taemin’s fruit choices into a basket. “I don’t get off until the market closes at seven, though. And then I have to take the stall home-”  
  
“Eight-thirty, then?” said Taemin. He handed Jonghyun the cranberries; they looked interesting. “Bring your cookbook.”  
  
“All right,” said Jonghyun. He was grinning, a wide, infectious grin that had Taemin grinning too, for absolutely no reason. “Will do!”

~~~

As Taemin had expected, Minho wasn’t there when Jonghyun arrived that night. Taemin greeted his friend at the door- because he supposed that’s what they were now, friends- and brought him inside.  
  
“Nice place,” Jonghyun commented, shucking his coat in the hall and following Taemin into the kitchen. “I like it. I like the artwork you have stuck to the walls everywhere.”  
  
Taemin regarded the paintings with some surprise; it had been a long time since he’d actively noticed they were there.  
  
“Minho put them up,” he explained. He opened a cupboard to take out two aprons and handed one to Jonghyun. “I wanted to be an artist when I was a kid, so he thought I’d appreciate it if he put stuff like that up on our walls.” Taemin shook the apron out, then hooked it over his neck and began working the tie in the back. “He used to bring back new ones every once in a while, but we ran out of space years ago.”  
  
“That was sweet of him,” said Jonghyun softly.  
  
Taemin shrugged. It had been a long time since Minho had come eagerly home with that particular puppy-dog sparkle in his eyes, shoving paintings into Taemin’s arms and smiling with the irrepressible urge to please. It had been  _years_  in fact, long enough for Taemin to almost forget how much he hated the paintings, their presence a mocking reminder of the career he could never have, assigned to the homemaker role as he was.  
  
He’d never told Minho that he hated the paintings. He’d gotten used to them instead. Taemin never had been able to bring himself to deliberately deny Minho any happiness; as it was, he did that too much by accident.  
  
Except for the baby thing… but no, he supposed he’d finally given in about that, too.  
  
“Put your apron on,” Taemin told Jonghyun. “Let’s get started with the cooking.”

~~~

Jonghyun left late that night. They had made a great deal of food, some of which Jonghyun took back with him. Taemin put the rest of it in the refrigerator and went to bed. It was nearly one in the morning, and Minho still wasn’t home.  
  
Taemin wasn’t worried. It was difficult to worry about anything just now. Taemin found himself smiling as he dozed off. His and Jonghyun’s adventures in fruit cooking had been the most fun he’d had in ages.  
  
He was half-asleep when Minho did come back, at perhaps four in the morning and smelling of strange soap. Minho whispered apologies as he slid beneath the blankets of their shared bed. He made a surprised sound when Taemin rolled over and kissed him, full of sleepy contentment from Jonghyun’s visit earlier.  
  
“Go back to sleep,” Minho murmured softly. He stroked Taemin’s hair. “Shh.”  
  
Taemin hummed and closed his eyes again, drifting away into darkness.

~~~

He dreamed of the tiger again. It was night and the world was vivid and sharp. Taemin did not know how to describe this sharpness, exactly. Everything was dark and almost colorless, but he could distinctly make out the shape of his enclosure and the distant twinkle of stars in the early morning sky.  
  
He turned his head, ears flicking back and forth, and heard things: the chirp of birds, the shuffle of an insomniac elephant, the low bay of a lonely wolf. He inhaled, and the air was clean and fresh in his lungs, full of the promise of power.  
  
It was glorious. Taemin flung his head back and roared out his pleasure in the dream. The noise was a scorching joy, and for a moment- just a moment- he felt alive.

~~~

They went to see Gwiboon again. She wanted them there for some check-up on Minho’s health so that when he did go through the procedure, the doctors would have a baseline to safely judge his health by. Taemin didn’t need to tag along, but he did. He liked Gwiboon. He liked her far too much, sometimes.  
  
He didn’t like the way she was touching Minho. It was true that she was professional about it, wielding an array of intimidating devices, some of which sparked with magic when laid against Minho’s bare skin, but Taemin didn’t like it anyway. He didn’t like the way her pink-gloved hands lingered against Minho’s broad shoulders, or the way she smiled at him, her dark eyes bright beneath the glare of the fluorescent examination lights.  
  
Taemin wanted Gwiboon to smile at  _him_  like that, with all that soft fondness. But she didn’t. She looked at him the same way the tiger looked at him, with a mysterious, taunting challenge lurking at the edges of her lipsticked mouth.  
  
“Relax,” said Minho afterwards, when Gwiboon had gone out of the room to confer over the results with her staff. “You always get so jumpy whenever we come here.”  
  
“I’m fine,” said Taemin stiffly. He rubbed a caress over Minho’s muscled back, wanting his own hands to smooth away the intrusions of Gwiboon’s. “Doctors just make me nervous, that’s all.”  
  
Minho had to know that this was a lie, but he didn’t call Taemin out on it. He just buttoned his shirt up instead, humming with quiet pleasure the way he always did whenever Taemin touched him like this. It was not the same kind of pleasure he’d been smiling with lately, but Taemin didn’t mind. It was only to be expected that the baby proceedings would make Minho happier than Taemin ever could.  
  
Gwiboon bustled back in, all swirling white lab coat and busy determination. Taemin let his hand fall away from Minho’s back. He lost himself in frowning at the doctor, caught in the bounce of her dark curls and wicked flutter of a smile.

~~~

Jonghyun came to visit more and more often. Taemin looked forward to these visits almost as much as he looked forward to his now daily trips to the zoo. The prison of his and Minho’s home seemed slightly less depressing when Jonghyun was around to crack bad jokes and lounge on the living room sofa, a beer in hand and the news a staticky crackle in the background of their conversations.  
  
Minho came back one night as Jonghyun was leaving, each bidding the other a polite greeting and farewell in the entryway. Minho had a thoughtful expression afterwards, as he came into the kitchen and tasted the strawberry pie Taemin and Jonghyun had just made.  
  
“I have a question,” Minho said finally. He sat down at the kitchen table, poking at the remnants of the pie slice he’d eaten while Taemin puttered about the sink, doing the dishes by hand. “Are you and Jonghyun…?”  
  
Taemin frowned over his shoulder at his husband.  
  
“Are we what?”  
  
“You know.” Minho dragged his fork through the crumbs on his plate. “Together.”  
  
Taemin nearly dropped the set of measuring spoons he was holding.  
  
“ _Together_?”  
  
“Are you having an affair?”  
  
Taemin did drop the spoons then. He whirled around to stare at Minho, wide-eyed.  
  
“Of course we’re not!”  
  
“Oh.” Minho had the grace to look briefly apologetic. “Sorry. I just wondered. You look a lot happier when he’s around, you know, so I was curious…”  
  
“He’s a  _friend_.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Minho said. He didn’t look sorry; he looked anxious. “It’d be all right with me if you  _were_  having an affair, you know, as long as you were careful about it.”  
  
Taemin didn’t know what to say to that. It had always been a careful pretense between them that nothing was wrong with their marriage, all the arguments, silent evenings and unspoken dissatisfaction notwithstanding. Taemin didn’t know what to do now that this pretense had been broken.  
  
“I’m not having an affair,” he said finally. “I’m sorry that you thought so.”  
  
“It’s all right.” Minho hesitated, fiddling with his fork. “I… am.”  
  
Taemin stared. “You- what?”  
  
“I’m seeing someone,” said Minho. He wasn’t looking at Taemin anymore. “I have been for a while, but I didn’t want to worry you by telling you. You worry too much about everything, and I know how severe the punishment is for getting caught at adultery…”  
  
“Why are you telling me  _now_?” said Taemin. His voice sounded strange to his own ears. “And who are you seeing?”  
  
Minho shrugged. “I as much as accused you of seeing Jonghyun just now,” he said. “I figured it was only fair to come clean about my own affair, after that.” He hesitated. “And you know Gwiboon? The doctor we’ve been seeing about the baby?”  
  
A spike of harsh, rending jealousy surged up into Taemin’s chest- but directed at whom, he didn’t know.  
  
“You’re seeing  _her_?”  
  
“No,” said Minho. He did look up now, his eyes wide and soft and sorry. “I’m seeing her brother.”  
  
“She has a brother?”  
  
“Mm.” Minho’s gaze turned fond, a slight smile tugging at his lips. “His name is Kibum, and he’s  _lovely_.”  
  
Taemin stared down at the cracked tiles of the kitchen floor. Minho had never called  _him_  lovely, not even back in the early days of their marriage, when their friendship had still been bright and new.  
  
“Are you okay?” A note of anxiety threaded back into Minho’s voice. “I thought you’d be all right with it, but I guess I could be wrong… I promise we’re being careful, Taemin. They won’t catch us at it, I swear.”  
  
Minho thought he was just worried about being caught at the crime of adultery. Taemin wanted to laugh, and didn’t. Why  _was_  he so upset, anyway? There was no reason to be.  
  
“I’m fine with it,” Taemin said. He turned away, back to the sink and the dishes. “As long as you don’t get yourself arrested, I don’t care  _what_  you do in your spare time.”  
  
A beat of silence. Taemin carefully controlled his breathing as he picked up the spoons and began washing them. There was nothing wrong. You couldn’t lose what you’d never wanted in the first place.  
  
“All right,” said Minho. Taemin heard him get up from the table with a scrape of wooden chair leg against smooth tile. “Thank you for being so understanding, Taemin. I really do appreciate it.”  
  
“No problem,” said Taemin. He set the spoons in the drying rack and reached for a plate. “Gwiboon is very pretty; I’m sure her brother is, too.”  
  
“He’s gorgeous,” said Minho, a tad wistfully. Taemin scrubbed harder at the plate. “Would you maybe like to meet him sometime?”  
  
Taemin’s fingers twitched against the squishiness of the sponge.  
  
“Wouldn’t that be awkward?” he asked.  
  
“Not necessarily.” Minho’s voice went earnest. “He’s very sweet; I think the two of you would get along real well.”  
  
“Sure,” said Taemin. He rinsed the plate off. “Whatever.”  
  
“Thank you,” said Minho again, very sincerely. He came up behind Taemin and hugged him briefly, their cheeks pressing together. Taemin held still, stiff as a board. Minho kissed his cheek and let go, then wandered away, humming under his breath.  
  
Taemin went back to the dishes, scrubbing hard at them with sudden violence. He thought of how happy Minho had been recently, and wondered if it was this Kibum’s influence rather than the prospect of a baby. Perhaps it was both. It certainly wasn’t anything to do with Taemin.

~~~

The tiger was asleep again the next morning. A group of small, annoying children were banging their fists on the glass in an attempt to get it to move. The enormous cat simply snoozed on, oblivious to the obnoxious noise.  
  
“He’s been asleep a lot recently,” said Jinki, once the children had gone away, leaving Taemin alone in the viewing shelter. “I’m worried about him.”  
  
Taemin raised an eyebrow at the zookeeper. Jinki was leaning against the opposite wall of the shelter and eating a sandwich. It must be his lunch break or something.  
  
“I thought all cats slept a lot,” said Taemin. Not that he’d ever seen one, besides the zoo animals, but all the sitcoms of upper-class life made jokes about forever-dozing felines. “Do you think it’s sick?”  
  
“No,” said Jinki, after a pause. “I think our poor Key is lonely.”  
  
Taemin had never considered the possibility that anything so ferocious as the tiger could ever be lonely. He stared at the still form of the sleeping animal and felt sorry for it.  
  
“Are tigers very rare?” he asked Jinki. “Can’t they find it a friend, or something?”  
  
Jinki hesitated. “Tigers are… difficult animals to find,” he said eventually. “And they have a tendency to dream.”  
  
Taemin frowned. “Dream?”  
  
“Read the sign,” said Jinki cryptically, then swallowed down the rest of his sandwich and went away.  
  
Taemin ambled over to the sign. He’d read through it before, of course, but never paid it much attention. He skipped to the part about dreaming now, curiosity spurred by the zookeeper’s words.  
  
The sign read:

> _Tigers are animals often associated with the magic of dreaming in the myths of many cultures. In the past of our own country, before our first Glorious Leader enlightened us from the folly of such mysticism, to become one with a tiger was to gain the ability to dream oneself free of the bonds of bone. This, of course, has since been scientifically proven false._

Taemin sighed. Some help that was. He went back across the shelter and returned to staring at the tiger. The rise and fall of its ribcage as it breathed was much more fascinating than vaguely factual drivel.

~~~

He didn’t tell Jonghyun about Minho’s affair. It felt wrong to burden his friend with his husband’s secret. Taemin kept the issue to himself and took comfort in just being in Jonghyun’s presence instead. It was nice to have a friend who didn’t expect anything of him for once, not even the pretense of being all right.  
  
He did go to see Gwiboon one day. He wasn’t sure why; it wasn’t as if she could help what her brother was doing. She might not even know about the affair. It wasn’t encouraged for families to stay close, not after one reached the age of legal adulthood and received a career path. Neither Taemin nor Minho had spoken to either of their own brothers in years.  
  
The clinic wasn’t busy that day, so the receptionist allowed him into Gwiboon’s office as a walk-in appointment. Taemin’s breathing quickened as he went down the by-now familiar hall. The adrenaline was giddy in his veins.  
  
“Taemin,” said Gwiboon. She smiled and rose to her feet as he closed the door behind him. “This is a surprise.”  
  
She didn’t sound surprised and didn’t look it either, no matter her words. Taemin didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. Gwiboon circled her desk and stepped towards him, her movements slow and lazy, a predator cornering her prey.  
  
When she was close enough, Taemin put his hands on her hips. Somehow, it wasn’t weird. She grinned at him, playful, and rested her forehead against his. Taemin had the feeling that he was looking through the wall at the tiger, only a few glass inches away from being mauled.  
  
He kissed her, in the mood for being mauled. She laughed into his mouth- a loud, cackling laugh- and kissed him back. Taemin pulled her close and kissed her harder. She melted into his touch, fingers tightening into the fabric of his jacket. It was like holding a live wire- electricity and danger and  _who gives a fuck_  all rolled into the heat of her mouth and the aggressive scrape of her teeth against his skin.  
  
It was familiar, like dreaming of the tiger, but  _real_. He kissed her and kissed her, and drowned in the heavy scent of her. He felt reckless, wild, out of control. She looked the same way, lost in the same high, drunk on his kisses the way he was drunk on hers.  
  
They fucked each other hard against the wall of the office. Taemin couldn’t help wondering all the while if this was how the mysterious Kibum made Minho feel, all soaring and breathless and  _alive_.

~~~

He didn’t tell Minho about the incident with Gwiboon. It felt very awkward somehow, given that she was still the doctor in charge of their pregnancy proceedings. Minho no doubt noticed the line of bite marks down Taemin’s throat that night, but he didn’t say anything about them. Perhaps it was because he had a line of his own, too, and Taemin said nothing about those.  
  
He dreamed of the tiger more vividly than ever before, that week. It felt like some wires had crossed in his head somehow; he dreamed himself to  _be_  the tiger, restless and caged, while the beast insinuated itself into his own skull. Taemin woke sometimes to find himself propped up on his side, fingers rubbing gentle circles against Minho’s shoulders, as if someone else had arranged him that way in his sleep without him knowing.  
  
It was strange, but Taemin didn’t care. It felt somehow natural that dreams and reality should blur and shiver and merge into one another, inseparable as they were.

~~~

 

There were many late-night comedy shows on TV. None of them were particularly amusing, given the strict standards of Censorship Bureau held them to. Mostly they just poked fun at how ridiculous it was to mock the Government. Endless jokes about implausibly incapable terrorists never entertained anyone for long.

Taemin watched the shows anyway. They were, after all, something to do. He’d started watching them more often recently, now that Minho was rarely home anymore to spend time with.

The current comedian tonight was halfway through a truly terrible skit about stringing anti-Government resistance fighters up like enchanted holiday lights when Minho arrived home. He was early, for once. Taemin turned the television off, surprised. It was only nine o’clock.

“Taemin?” Minho called. His voice was bright with excitement. “Taemin, where are you?”

“Here,” said Taemin. He didn’t bother to move, just waited where he was for Minho to come and find him. “What’s up?”

Minho entered the room only a few seconds later. He had a wide grin on his face and a fat envelope in one hand. He tossed the envelope at Taemin and sat down at the other end of the couch.

“Look in there!” he said, with sparkling eyes.

Taemin looked. Then he swore loudly. The envelope was stuffed full of high-denomination bills.

“What did you  _do_ , rob a bank?” said Taemin incredulously. “Where the hell is this all from?”

“Kibum gave it to me,” Minho said happily. “He said he entered one of the State lotteries and won.”

“What, is he nuts?” Taemin asked. He put the envelope down. “Why is he giving all this to  _you_? I’d’ve kept it, if I were him.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not him,” said Minho. Taemin’s fingers twitched. Minho went on: “He knows how hard we’ve been trying to save up to pay for the pregnancy procedure. I tried to tell him we’d just keep saving on our own for it, but, well…” He shrugged. “Now we don’t  _have_  to wait a year to go through with it.”

Taemin stared down at his knees. Everything was happening much too fast. Tigers and secret lovers and babies and an envelope full of cash. He wanted, suddenly, desperately, for his life to go back to being a depressing cage of nothingness. At least he knew how to deal with that.

“…Taemin?” Minho’s voice was softer now, concerned. “We can still wait a bit before registering for the procedure, if you’re not ready. I don’t mean to rush you-”

“It’s okay,” said Taemin. He got to his feet, leaving the envelope on the couch. “We can do it whenever, I don’t care.”

“Are you sure? I mean it, we can wait, if you-”

“I’m sure.”

Another moment of silence. Then Minho said, and bitterly:

“Why can’t you just be  _happy_  about something for once? You make everything feel so miserable.”

“Everything  _is_  miserable,” said Taemin. He almost said:  _only fucking idiots can’t see that_ , but caught himself in time. He clenched his hands into fists instead. “We can go and make an appointment with Gwiboon later this week to set things up for the procedure.”

“Yeah,” said Minho. His voice was low and sad, all the excitement drained away. “Yeah, sure, we can do that.”

Taemin left the living room. He went up to their bedroom instead, then went into the bathroom and took a shower. The water was ice cold against his skin. It hurt, but that was all right. Taemin felt he deserved it for making Minho sound like that, sound like him.

~~~

  
They went to see Gwiboon. She gave Taemin a little secretive smile at first when Minho wasn’t looking, but otherwise behaved no differently towards him. Taemin was relieved. He felt tired to the bone again, too listless to be able to deal with her excess of vibrant energy.

There was an irritating amount of paperwork to be done before the procedure could take place. Gwiboon helped them fill it all out. Then she arranged for them to be seen by a doctor at another clinic, in order to acquire a second opinion that Taemin’s fake medical problems were legitimate, and so legally obtain permission for Minho to carry the baby.

Gwiboon was full of both reassurances that this second doctor would cooperate, as well as congratulatory excitement about the unexpected windfall which had permitted them to seek the procedure so soon.

“Ah, so Kibum gave you the money he won?” she said, sounding profoundly unsurprised by her brother’s actions. “That’s so sweet of him. I’m glad you two met each other; it sounds like you’ve become quite good friends.”

“We have,” said Minho, and smiled at her. She smiled back with equal fondness. Taemin wanted to kick something. He didn’t.

He asked later, after he and Minho were walking home, how he and Kibum had met. Minho replied with a starry little smile and some story of how he’d gone to turn in some insurance forms to the clinic and met Kibum lurking awkwardly outside, having intended to meet his sister for lunch only to find her away on an unscheduled house call. Minho and Kibum had gone out for lunch together instead, and subsequently bonded.

It was a silly, romantic little tale. Taemin listened to it in silence and remembered meeting Minho in the halls of their high school, years ago. They’d been friendly then, but only vaguely, the two-year age gap preventing closer contact. Taemin had liked him in a distant sort of way. He’d never expected to one day be ordered to marry the guy.

Minho nudged Taemin’s shoulder with his own, sending Taemin stumbling a little on the sidewalk.

“Stop frowning,” said Minho, not unkindly. He laced his fingers with Taemin’s own, their palms pressing together. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” said Taemin. He squeezed their hands together, very briefly. “Nothing at all.”

~~~

  
The tiger had been restless all week, growling and agitated. Jinki the zookeeper said it wasn’t eating well and still sleeping far too much, in between bouts of random pacing about its enclosure.

Taemin knew how the creature felt. He leaned against the glass viewing wall and breathed in time with the tiger’s steps. His lungs felt fixed to the tune of feverish feline eyes and the swish of a long tail. Taemin’s hands trembled in his jacket pockets. He felt weak and sick, addicted to the gorgeous burning menace of the tiger.

Jinki lectured him again on how dangerous it was to be here so often. Taemin continued to ignore him. He needed this. He needed  _something_.

~~~

  
The evening after they acquired the second doctor’s permission on the registration forms, Minho went out somewhere presumably with Kibum, and Taemin called Jonghyun to ask him over. He wanted Jonghyun’s easy, comforting presence just now. The house felt like a fading cage, bars compressing into gray air all around him, the echo of medical magic still lingering in his skin.

Jonghyun was busy and couldn’t come over. Taemin went to vacuum the entire apartment with a vengeance, drowning out his heartbeat with the roar of the machine.

It was a wet and cloudy Tuesday night. Whatever outdoor event Minho and Kibum had gone out to see was cancelled. They came back to Taemin and Minho’s place that evening instead, startling Taemin out of his vacuuming spree with a sudden tumble of noise and cheerful laughter.

“Taemin?” Minho called from downstairs. “Kibum’s here! Come say hi!”

Taemin did not want to come say hi. He wanted to vacuum every last piece of his soul out. He turned the vacuum off and went downstairs anyway. One couldn’t hide from these things forever.

“Taemin, this is Kibum,” said Minho happily the moment Taemin came into the entryway. “Kibum, this is my husband, Taemin.”

Taemin didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. He couldn’t breathe. It was unfair how much Kibum resembled his sister. They had the exact same distracting cheekbones, pretty feline eyes and compressed wild energy in the set of their shoulders. Kibum grinned at Taemin the same way Gwiboon always did, with a knowing, wicked playfulness that made Taemin’s blood pound hard through every pulsing vein.

“Hey,” said Kibum. He offered a lazy bow of greeting. “It’s nice to meet you, Taemin.”

“You too,” Taemin managed to croak out somehow. “Um…”

“Come into the kitchen,” Minho said quickly. “I’ll make some tea for us, shall I?”

Kibum’s eyes softened, his smile suddenly sweetly affectionate as he turned his gaze on Minho.

“Sure, love,” he said. Minho’s ears went red at the pet name. “That sounds great.”

Taemin followed the two of them into the kitchen. Kibum moved with the same predatory grace his sister did, like a tiger on the prowl. Taemin wanted him. Taemin hated him. Taemin didn’t know what to  _do_  about him, because he was so very, very unexpected.

“Here,” said Kibum, stepping closer to Minho. “Let me help you with that.”

Taemin sat at the table and watched the two of them make tea. Kibum seemed very comfortable in the kitchen, as if it were the most wonderful place in the world. He was also clearly very fond of Minho, teasing him with playful winks and unsettling him in the best of ways with sudden aegyo. Minho lit up around him the way Taemin had never seen him do around anyone else, smiling and laughing and teasing back as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

They were going to fall in love, Taemin realized suddenly. They hadn’t yet, but they would, and sometime soon, at that. He stared down at the tabletop and tried to will himself to feel happy for them. He couldn’t.

 _Selfish_ , he thought to himself.  _I’m selfish_. Minho deserved to be with someone who brought him to life like this. Taemin had always thought so. It was wrong of him to resent that only now, when he had a face and name to put with the general sentiment.

He kept quiet throughout the whole evening. It was easy. He didn’t have much to say. He just drank his tea and listened and concentrated on not staring at every expressive quirk of Kibum’s face. Time passed in a blur of sound and the scent of tea. It was a hot, sweet scent, scorching into the back of Taemin’s throat and making his eyes burn salty. He breathed it in and found himself thinking of pine needles instead, and the filthy sweaty press of crowds on a sunny zoo day.

He noticed when Kibum left, of course. He noticed it in the way his own heart rate slowed back to normal and in the way that excited sparkle in Minho’s eyes faded away. As soon as the front door closed behind their visitor, everything went back to normal. The tea smelled like saccharine hot water, and there was no sun anywhere.

Minho went to go watch television. Taemin went back to vacuuming. When they went to sleep that night, Taemin didn’t know if he dreamed of tigers or the Kim siblings or himself, only that dream he did, and the dream was more vivid than reality could ever be.

~~~

  
“Minho’s having an affair,” Taemin said to Jonghyun a few days later. They were making stew this time. Jonghyun was an excellent cook and an excellent teacher. The food they made together always tasted better than anything Taemin could make on his own.

Jonghyun went still from the table where he’d been peeling potatoes.

“An affair?”

“Mm-hmm.” Taemin shook a careful tablespoon of salt into the pot of boiling water. “With this guy named Kibum. I met him the other night. He’s nice.”

Jonghyun was quiet for a moment. Then:

“And it doesn’t bother you, your husband cheating on you like this? You’re not jealous?”

“It’s not cheating,” said Taemin. He fiddled with the flame temperature. “And of course I’m not jealous. It’s not like we actually care about each other.”

“I think you care about him more than you’re willing to admit,” said Jonghyun. His voice rose with indignation. “And I think it’s awful of him to do this to you  _now_ , right when you’ve given in and agreed to have a baby together-”

“It’s not awful of him to want to be happy,” Taemin said severely- maybe a little  _too_  severely. He swallowed hard. “And he’s not the only one who…. well. I slept with someone else, too.”

“What? Who?” Jonghyun’s voice was startled, sharp. Taemin shrugged.

“Does it matter?” He laughed, low and ragged. “We’re a mess, aren’t we?”

“Everyone’s a mess.” Taemin glanced sideways and found Jonghyun smiling at him, with the crooked, lopsided grin that was always so comforting to see. “The trick is to learn to  _enjoy_  the mess.”

Taemin couldn’t but laugh at that. It was such a typically Jonghyun statement, ridiculous and reassuring all at once. Jonghyun grinned wider and flung a potato peel in Taemin’s direction. It hit him the face, slimy and chill and  _real_.

Taemin threw it back. Jonghyun threw another one. Taemin hurled a strip of onion in retaliation, and a full-on food fight ensued. They laughed together like immature children, bright and obnoxious and reveling in the mess. It was fun. Jonghyun was fun. Taemin had never appreciated onions and potato peels more.

~~~

  
That same week, they went and had the baby made. The procedure itself took only an hour. Minho came out of it looking vaguely queasy and ill. Taemin felt smug that his own part had only involved producing sperm and had therefore been much more pleasurable than whatever complicated magical transformation Minho had had to endure.

Despite the nausea, Minho seemed quite pleased with himself. Taemin tried to feel pleased as well. It was difficult. They were going to have a baby in nine months. Taemin tried to imagine the feel of one in his arms and couldn’t. He’d never been around a baby before. Maybe he ought to have read some of those awful childcare magazines Minho still had lying about. What if he fed the baby something wrong and got it sick? Or dropped it? Babies grew up into children, too. What if Taemin didn’t watch the thing properly and it ran into the street and got hurt? Minho would never forgive him.

“Stop panicking,” said an amused Minho later that night, after he found Taemin frantically speed-reading through every parenting magazine in the house. “We have a whole nine months before our little one arrives. Besides, didn’t I tell you before that I trust you? You’ll be a wonderful father for our child.”

“I don’t think so,” said Taemin. He put the magazine down. “I’m not good at anything. That’s why they assigned me to you, remember?” The memory stung. “You’re the responsible one. I’m the one who’s good for nothing but housework, and I even suck at that. You can’t replace a baby if it breaks. They’re not like plates or microwaves.”

Minho sat down next to him and settled an arm about his shoulders. Taemin immediately turned and buried himself into his husband’s arms, letting Minho cuddle him close and pet his hair.

“They assigned us together because I was the worst sort of overachiever when I was younger, and you never cared about anything but art,” said Minho softly. He held Taemin tighter; Taemin clung back, breathing hard. “It’s not your fault if the Government isn’t fond of single-minded artistic folk.” He kissed the top of Taemin’s head. “You’ll do fine with the baby, I  _promise_.”

Taemin sighed and didn’t argue, for all that he didn’t believe this irrational optimism at all, not one bit.

~~~

  
“You know,” said the staff member at the zoo gates when Taemin arrived one morning. “You’ve been coming here an awful lot recently. Do you really like animals, then?”

“I like tigers,” said Taemin, and gave her his zoo pass. “Do you like them?”

She shrugged, scanned the pass, typed something into her computer and handed the pass back.

“Sure. Have a nice day, sir!”

Taemin put the exchange out of his mind and went eagerly to go see the tiger. He paid no attention to the narrow-eyed way the security guards watched him as he strode along. They didn’t matter. The tiger was the only thing that did.

~~~

  
Kibum kept coming over to visit. Taemin didn’t like it. Kibum was distracting in the exact same way his sister was. He made everything so much more interesting when he was there, some indefinable quality about his eccentric personality and sparkling force of presence bringing even the most mundane details to vivid life. Taemin hated it. The aftermath of Kibum’s visits always made facing reality again feel worse.

Taemin didn’t like the way Kibum and Minho were all over each other, either. At the same time, he couldn’t really blame them. He wasn’t sure what exactly someone like Kibum saw in someone like Minho (except maybe that Minho became different in Kibum’s presence the way everything did- brighter and happier and more certain) but there was no denying the magnetic pull of Kibum’s everything. Taemin wanted to pin him down and fuck him and drown in him, and he didn’t even  _like_  the guy. It was no wonder that Minho had fallen so hard.

One evening, Minho was unexpectedly dragged into going into a rally by one of his coworkers, and didn’t come home when scheduled. He left a message for Taemin on voicemail, apologizing and letting him know that Kibum might turn up, and could Taemin please tell him what had happened?

It was raining when the doorbell rang. Taemin went and opened it. Kibum stood there, soaking wet and shivering in the chill. Taemin had half a mind to send him away since Minho wasn’t here. But there was something in Kibum’s pleading, miserable expression as he gazed at Taemin that stilled the impulse. Taemin felt inexplicably reminded of the one time he’d seen the tiger caught in a sudden downpour. The beast’s eyes had gone wide, startled by the rain, and it had curled up on itself like a frightened kitten. Kibum looked much the same way now.

“Come in,” Taemin said gruffly. He stepped back and gestured Kibum past him. “I’ll go grab you a dry set of clothes.”

“Th-thanks,” Kibum said, teeth chattering. “Is M-Minho-”

“He won’t be here for a while,” said Taemin. “Something came up.” He hesitated, then added reluctantly: “You can stay for a bit anyway, if you want to warm up…”

“That’d b-be nice,” said Kibum. He smiled. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Taemin muttered.

He went upstairs to go get the clothes. Kibum followed him up the stairs, dripping water everywhere. Why he hadn’t brought a raincoat or umbrella was a mystery to Taemin. It had been raining all day. Surely Kibum must have known he’d get wet coming here.

Taemin first found a towel, which he tossed to Kibum to dry off with. Then he went rummaging around in Minho’s half of their tall dresser, looking for a spare T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. After he’d found some, he turned around to hand them to Kibum, only to find his guest suddenly distractingly naked, save for the towel draped around his shoulders.

“What?” said Kibum. He grinned at Taemin’s stare. “Like what you see?”

Taemin swallowed hard. Kibum was  _very_  nice to look at, yes, but Taemin shouldn’t be looking. Kibum was Minho’s fling, not his.

“Here,” said Taemin. His voice was hoarser than he’d have liked. He held out the shirt and pants. “I have clothes for you.”

Kibum’s eyes flashed at him. Then he prowled forward in the lithe, graceful way a predator might move, having sensed a nearing opportunity to strike. Taemin’s breath caught in his throat, and his mind went fuzzy.

The towel was very orange around Kibum’s neck. Taemin could have  _sworn_  he’d handed over a white one.

“I don’t think I need clothes for this,” Kibum murmured. He was close now, close enough for Taemin to smell the wild rain on him, the scent of mud and wet leaves and musky fur. “Do you?”

“Do I what?” said Taemin breathlessly. He took a step back and winced when his hip banged into the dresser front. “Um-”

Kibum grinned again. Taemin had the impression of a tail swaying lazily through the air, rounded ears pricked atop a massive head. Kibum himself was very beautiful up close, every bit as beautiful as his sister was, in all the same ways.

“Do  _you_  think I need clothes?” Kibum asked playfully. He took a step closer still, trapping Taemin between himself and the tall dresser. “Don’t you think this would be easier without them?”

“I don’t understand,” said Taemin. His mind felt like it had shorted out- surely Kibum couldn’t be suggesting what Taemin thought he was suggesting. “You and Minho-”

“Minho’s a darling, and I love him dearly,” Kibum said softly. “But what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. And I’ve been dreaming of this for far too long now to hold back any more.”

“ _Dreaming_?” said Taemin. He stared, shocked, into Kibum’s eyes- and what eyes they were, for they seemed almost orange and black in this light, like tiger’s eyes. He added urgently: “Are you-”

Kibum kissed him, and Taemin forgot everything he’d been trying to say. He put his arms around Kibum’s warm and naked body instead and pulled him close, relishing in the way Kibum arched up against him with an eager little growl. Their hands pawed at each other with a desperate intensity, Taemin helpless to every skillful slide of Kibum’s palms against his bare skin, both of them drowning in the all-consuming hot tide of pleasure.

Taemin barely knew when he lost his shirt, unable to focus on anything but the shivery heat of Kibum’s mouth on him, Kibum’s hard cock pressing against his, Kibum’s hands tangling fiercely in his hair. They rutted against each other like animals in heat, both panting hard as Kibum rocked himself up against Taemin, mouths crushing together in sloppy, biting kisses. Taemin’s back hurt from how roughly Kibum had him pressed up against the uneven wall of dresser, but he couldn’t find the concentration in him to care. There was nothing in the world for him except Kibum, and Taemin abandoned himself to the feeling,  _needing_  it to last forever and ever.

It didn’t, of course. They came hard against each other far too soon, spilling a hot and sticky mess against each other’s bare stomachs. Taemin crumpled into Kibum’s arms afterward, gasping for breath into Kibum’s shoulder while Kibum nuzzled gently at his ear.

With the mind-numbing rush of sheer pleasure gone, guilt resurfaced. Taemin squeezed his eyes shut, shame making them prick salty with unshed tears.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” he muttered. “I don’t understand why you  _wanted_ to. If you really loved Minho-”

“I love you, too,” said Kibum gently. His voice was very soft and deep. “I love both of you. Isn’t there room enough in a human heart for that?”

“You can’t love me.” Taemin’s voice broke. “You don’t even know me.”

“I know more than you think.”

Taemin straightened, settled his weight on his own feet and shoved Kibum away. Kibum stumbled backwards, eyes wide with hurt.

“You don’t know anything,” said Taemin, low and suddenly furious. “Get out of my house.”

Kibum’s expression shifted into something unreadable.

“It’s Minho’s house too, you know.”

“Oh, so  _now_  you care about him?” Taemin found his voice rising with anger. “You fucking  _bastard_ -”

“ _Me_?” Kibum’s face contorted into a scowl, matching Taemin glare for glare. “ _I_  wasn’t the one begging for more just now-”

“So?  _You_  two are the ones who are together, in case you’d fucking  _forgotten_ -”

“The two of  _you_  are  _married_!”

“That doesn’t fucking matter!” Taemin yelled, too incensed to watch his words. “It’s  _you_  he’s in love with, not me! You can’t just waltz into his life and make him the happiest I’ve ever seen him, then fucking do  _this_  to him, you piece of utter _shit_!”

Kibum stared at him. Taemin looked away, suddenly humiliated at the way he’d let all that slip.

“You’re wrong,” said Kibum finally, his voice very quiet. “I’m pretty sure Minho loves you, too, he just doesn’t know that you-”

“Get out,” said Taemin. He stared down at the carpet. “Get the fuck out,  _now_.”

Kibum went. It took Taemin a long, long time to move from the dresser and clean himself off. And it took him even longer to realize that Kibum had gone so quietly that Taemin hadn’t even heard the door open and close behind him, and so quickly that he could not have cleaned himself up, nor even dressed himself, for all that his wet clothes had vanished with him when he’d gone.

~~~

  
Taemin’s dreams of the tiger turned sour. No longer were the nights a heady rush of freedom and power in feline form. Suddenly, he was all too aware of bland zoo food, cold wet nights and the cramped confines of his enclosure. A sensation of intense loneliness made itself known as well, making him feel hollow and aching from the inside out. He lay in the shelter of the indoor portion of his cage, the concrete hard beneath his paws and no companionship to be found anywhere.

He was alone. The weight of the tiger’s body around him felt wrong, caging him in a cell of flesh and bone and fur, trapping himself in a nightmare of isolation. The tiger’s longing beat at Taemin’s soul, a fevered, needy desire for someone, _anyone_  to share the days and nights with, to love and to care for and to hold close on the evenings where the rain was icy chill and the wind freezing sharp.

Taemin woke and found that his cheeks were wet with tears and his eyes red from crying. He put his hands to his face, astonished. He hadn’t cried- actually  _cried_ \- in years. It just wasn’t something that he  _did_.

He closed his eyes again and tried to go back to sleep, but it was useless, the prospect of encountering that overpowering loneliness again too terrifying to permit any sort of relaxation at all.

~~~

  
Kibum continued to occasionally visit. He behaved no differently around Taemin than he had before, for the most part, and Taemin tried his best to do the same. And yet, he found Kibum gazing wistfully at him every so often, with an expression full of a strange, inexplicable longing.

Taemin didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t know what to make of the fact that he found Gwiboon staring at him like that too sometimes, when they visited her for check-ups on the progress of Minho’s pregnancy.  Probably Kibum had told his sister of what had happened- they seemed unusually close, for siblings- but Taemin wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

Fortunately, Minho didn’t seem to have noticed that anything was wrong. That was the most important thing. Taemin would do anything to keep it that way.

~~~

  
He did tell Jonghyun what had happened. Jonghyun listened in silence, speaking only when Taemin reached his disturbing conclusion: that he felt he was going slowly insane.

“Insane?” said Jonghyun. For once, it looked like he didn’t know what to say to Taemin’s confessions. “I don’t think you’re crazy, just really fucking stressed. I mean, you just told me you cheated on your husband with the guy your husband is cheating on  _you_  with. I’m pretty sure that’s enough to stress  _anyone_  out.”

“ _Kibum_  did the cheating, not me,” Taemin said irritably. “I told you before- Minho and I have an understanding. Besides, that’s not the problem. I think he’s the tiger.”

Jonghyun stared at him. “You think Minho is a tiger?”

“Not Minho,  _Kibum_ ,” said Taemin. He shifted restlessly sideways. “And not just any tiger, either. The one at the zoo.”

“…all right, then,” Jonghyun said finally, after another moment of silence. “I give up, maybe you really  _have_  lost it. What on earth makes you think the guy’s a  _tiger_?”

Taemin shrugged. He didn’t know how to explain the way Kibum and Gwiboon and the tiger had all merged themselves together in his mind. He considered telling Jonghyun that he’d hallucinated tiger’s eyes for Kibum’s own, and didn’t. That was weird. This whole thing was weird. Maybe Jonghyun was right, and he really  _was_  just stressed.

“Have you told Minho what happened between you and Kibum?” Jonghyun asked, leaving aside the tiger business for now. “I think you should. He deserves to know.”

“No,” said Taemin absently, mind still on tigers and the delicious bite of Kibum’s teeth against his throat. “It would hurt him if he knew.”

“He’s a grown man, Taemin,” said Jonghyun wearily. “I’m sure he can handle it. You don’t need to shield him from all the world,  _especially_  given what he’s done to you.”

“He didn’t do anything to me,” Taemin said stiffly. He felt a pang of disappointment; it wasn’t that he’d expected Jonghyun to understand his feelings, but it would have been nice if his friend had been able to. But then, Jonghyun had never seen either Minho or Taemin six years ago, before an endless eternity of a marriage they both hated had drained them of the ability to be happy, and left them bored, gray shells of beings instead.

Kibum made those hollowed-out husks come to life again. Taemin appreciated that in a way he knew Jonghyun never could. Jonghyun knew how to make himself happy in this hell of a world. Minho needed Kibum to do it for him. Taemin needed the tiger, or maybe no one. Maybe there was nothing in this world that could bring him joy anymore. He’d ruined himself and ruined Minho and now he had, somehow, ruined the tiger as well. Maybe one day he would ruin Jonghyun too. It wouldn’t surprise him, really.

“Taemin,” said Jonghyun, gently. Taemin started and looked up. “Taemin, it’s gonna be okay, alright? I promise.”

 _Liar_ , thought Taemin, but Jonghyun’s optimism didn’t annoy him the same way Minho’s did. Jonghyun in general did not annoy him the same way Minho did. It did not hurt to care about Jonghyun.

Taemin sighed and breathed out and determinedly did not think of the glitter of Kibum’s pretty eyes, only the comforting upwards curve of Jonghyun’s smile.

~~~

  
The tiger grew thinner and thinner and ever more listless as the days went by. Jinki’s face became pinched and worried; he confessed to Taemin that Key had become sick for no understandable reason that the zoo veterinarians could find.

Taemin, for the first time, found that he didn’t like the way the tiger looked at him. It was the same wistful, aching gaze he received from the Kim siblings these days, and it was unnerving to receive it from the tiger as well.

Taemin still could not keep away from the zoo, however. A disconcerting addiction was an addiction nonetheless.

~~~

  
The fifth week after the procedure, Minho developed a sudden propensity to morning sickness which made him hell to deal with. Taemin had never been the solicitous sort and wasn’t about to start now. He resented having to deal with regular bouts of nauseous vomiting and disliked how incurably tired Minho had become, leaving a far greater share of the housework to Taemin than he’d had to do before.

Taemin tried not to complain about this, he really did. He’d known that Minho being pregnant was going to cause problems and had thought he’d steeled himself to deal with them. But he couldn’t help resenting everything anyway, and dreading how much worse he knew it was going to get as the weeks went by.

It didn’t help that Minho stoically tried his best not to let the morning sickness and the exhaustion get to him. It didn’t help either that Kibum, on his visits, was a dozen times more sweetly caring and considerate of Minho’s needs than Taemin could bring himself to be. It made Taemin feel selfish. He didn’t like feeling selfish. He didn’t like being wrong.

“I’m sorry,” said Minho one day, kneeling shakily by the toilet after having heaved his breakfast out of his stomach. “I know you hate dealing with all this stuff I’m putting you through-”

“It’s okay,” said Taemin. He was sitting on the bathtub edge, occasionally reaching out to pat Minho’s back in a weak attempt to be comforting. “It’s not you, it’s that thing inside you that’s being annoying.”

That, it turned out, was the wrong thing to say. Minho’s expression shifted from apologetic to hurt and angry in the space of a heartbeat.

“Our baby is not a  _thing_ ,” he snapped, eyes narrowing furiously at Taemin. “How can you think of it that way?”

“Why wouldn’t I think of it like that?” Taemin replied. He frowned, baffled by this sudden swing in mood. “It’s nothing more than a parasite right now.”

“A  _parasite_? How the fuck can you compare it to something so awful?”

“It  _is_  being awful, though,” Taemin protested. Minho’s glare deepened.

“Are you serious?  _Awful_? And here I thought you said you  _wanted_  for us to go ahead and-”

“I wanted to because I thought it’d make you happy,” Taemin said, struggling with the edge of his own temper now. “I didn’t realize being pregnant with that thing was gonna do  _this_  to you, or maybe I’d’ve said no!”

“The baby  _does_  make me happy!” Minho yelled at him. “Or it  _would_ , if you would only be a little more invested in it!”

“Why would  _I_  be invested in it?” Taemin said incredulously. “ _You’re_ the pregnant one.”

“Because we’re in this together! We’re  _married_ -”

“Only because we  _have_ to be!”

Minho went quiet after that. Taemin bit down hard on his lower lip, wishing intensely that he hadn’t let his temper get to him like that. But the words had been said; he couldn’t take them back now.

“I’m sorry,” Minho said finally. He lowered his eyes and stared down into the mess in the toilet bowl. “Sometimes I forget how much you hate being married to me. I just feel like we should try our best to deal with things being the way they are but… it’s unfair of me to ask you to want the things I do, when I’ve already taken so much from you.”

Taemin’s chest hurt. He shook his head vigorously, even though he knew Minho wasn’t looking at him.

“You haven’t taken anything from me,” he said softly. “It’s not your fault they assigned us together. I shouldn’t be taking my frustrations out on you, either.”

He reached out and cautiously put a hand on Minho’s shoulder. Minho leaned into the touch after a moment, and the silence gradually became companionable instead of tense.

“You know,” said Minho, after a while. “This would be the point in a soap opera where we’d reaffirm our undying marital love for each other and make out like a pair of horny teenagers.”

Taemin couldn’t help it; he let out an undignified snort of a giggle, which made Minho grin.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Taemin said, voice rippling with amusement. “Your mouth is full of vomit; I am  _not_  kissing you like that.”

Minho laughed. “I don’t expect you to, no worries.” He tilted his head sideways and nuzzled his cheek against Taemin’s hand, eyes thoughtful. “Do you realize that we’ve been married for six whole years, and never once said that we love each other?”

Taemin shrugged. “Why lie?”

Minho sighed. “True.” Then he made a face. “Ugh, stay back, I think more is coming up.”

Taemin laughed softly and snatched his hand out of the way.

~~~

  
Seven days later, Taemin received a visitor.

The visitor came in the evening on a weekday. Jonghyun was there as well. He and Taemin were experimenting with a vegetable dish they’d found in the back of one of Taemin’s cookbooks. Taemin wasn’t expecting a visitor, but partway through their preparations, the doorbell rang.

Taemin went to get it. When he opened the door, a woman in a suit was standing there. She had a neat, short-cropped hairstyle, expensive spectacles and an actual  _tie_.

“Hello,” said the woman, with a polite tilt of her head. “Are you Lee Taemin?”

Taemin stared at her. The shadowy translucent glimmer of an electro-magical readout flickered in the lenses of her spectacles.

“Yes,” said Taemin. “That’s me. Who are you?”

“My name is irrelevant,” said the woman placidly. “I’m an agent of the Family Bureau, and I am here to take you into rehabilitative custody.”

Taemin’s eyes widened.

“You  _what_?”

“We’ve been watching you for quite a while, Taemin,” she said. Her tone was kind, almost maternal. “Your obsessive visits to the tiger cage at the zoo have not gone unnoticed, and nor has the fact that your spouse is carrying a child in defiance of both your roles.”

“I have a medical condition,” Taemin said numbly. “We got  _permission_  for Minho to carry the baby.”

The woman waited politely for him to finish. Then she said gently:

“Yes, we’re aware of that. However, the inability to properly perform your role has clearly stressed you to the point of developing an unhealthy obsession with the zoo tiger. You will therefore be temporarily relocated to a facility to rest and heal before being reassigned to another worker, one who will be better able to take care of you.”

Panic gripped Taemin’s chest. He couldn’t breathe. Never once had he thought that his zoo trips would have been so monitored. Never had he thought that his tiger dreams would have led to  _this_. He couldn’t go. He couldn’t leave everything like this- Minho and Jonghyun and the tiger and- but what else could he  _do_? One did not defy the Government. One just  _didn’t_. People who did vanished forever and never came back. Taemin didn’t want to vanish. He didn’t want to be killed like that, or at all, really.

“Taeminnie! What’s up? Who is it?”

Taemin jumped with surprise when a pair of strong arms settled about his waist. Jonghyun had hugged him from behind, and was now proceeding to rest his chin on Taemin’s shoulder and nuzzle close.

“It’s, er,” said Taemin, flustered and not knowing what to do about this odd behavior from his friend. “It’s, um-”

“It’s of no importance,” said the agent smoothly. Her eyes narrowed at Jonghyun. “And who are you?”

Jonghyun giggled, actually  _giggled_. Taemin was so astonished by the uncharacteristic sound that he forgot how to speak.

“I’m Jonghyun,” said Jonghyun, in coy, flirtatious, very very weird tones. He snuggled closer to Taemin, gazing with sweet curiosity up at the agent. “I’m Taemin’s, um.” His hands slipped down to rest suggestively on Taemin’s hips. “ _Friend._ ”

“I see,” said the agent slowly. Her gaze turned considering. “Kim Jonghyun, is it? We've recorded your visits to this household increasing in frequency recently.”

“Taeminnie is a very  _close_  friend,” said Jonghyun, all baffled innocence. “Why wouldn’t I visit him a lot?”

Taemin stared helplessly down at where Jonghyun’s thumbs had begun to rub circles against his bare skin, just beneath the hem of his shirt. He had no idea what on earth Jonghyun was doing, but he had a feeling that this nonsense was not a smart thing to do in front of a  _Government agent_ , of all people. He wished Jonghyun would stop. This wasn’t going to end well. What if the agent suspected them of adultery? That was a crime with a terrible punishment, for betraying the fabric of traditional family life that the Government so rigorously promoted and defended.

“Taemin,” said the agent thoughtfully. “I would like to ask if you’re truly all right with the fact that you’re not the one carrying the baby in your marital unit, despite your role.”

“Oh, Taeminnie’s fine with it!” said Jonghyun, before Taemin could reply. “He’s been  _so_  excited about having a baby soon that sometimes I think he forgets what role he even is! Not that he  _actually_  forgets his role,” he added hastily, as if suddenly aware of a misstep in his words. “Just that a baby is something really awesome, y’know? It’s something Taemin’s wanted for a really long time now, just with his medical problems and all…”

Taemin made a strangled noise, unable to figure out what to say in the face of these blatant lies. The agent, however, seemed to be buying it. She nodded along with a considering expression, until she finally cut Jonghyun off.

“I suppose this means that Taemin’s stress has a different source than we'd originally assumed, then.”

“Stress?” Jonghyun laughed and held Taemin tighter, so tight that Taemin choked and squawked and began subtly trying to pry Jonghyun’s arms off of him. “Taeminnie’s not  _stressed_!”

“I beg to differ,” the agent murmured. Her gaze lowered to fix on where Taemin was tugging as discreetly as he could at Jonghyun’s wrists. Then she looked back up. “Mr. Kim, I’m afraid I will have to ask you to come with me.”

“Me?” Jonghyun paused and gave her a ditzy, baffled stare. “Why me?”

“I believe we may have a few questions to ask you,” said the agent politely. “Please,  _now_ , if you would?”

Jonghyun shrugged. “Sure thing,” he said, finally letting go of Taemin. “If it’ll help my pretty friend out, I’d do anything.” He winked outrageously at Taemin as he stepped forward towards the agent. “See ya tomorrow then, cutie! And I’ll call you tonight!”

 _Cutie_? thought Taemin incredulously, watching with complete bafflement as the agent led Jonghyun away. What on  _earth_ had just happened here?

~~~

  
Jonghyun did not call him that night. Taemin called Jonghyun’s home number, but received no response. He went to bed with nervousness rising. Government agents never meant anything good.  _Why_  had Jonghyun felt the need to act so oddly that evening? Taemin couldn’t understand it at all.

Jonghyun did not call him the next day either. Nor was he at the market. The place where his fruit stand usually stood was now occupied by a new vendor. None of the surrounding vendors knew what had happened to him, but they, and Taemin, could guess.

Jonghyun had been taken away to be executed, the shared fate of everyone who upset the strictly maintained Governmental order. Taemin went home in shock, unable to really process the fact that Jonghyun was gone. Dead.  _Gone_.

There was a sealed envelope waiting for him in the mailbox when he returned home. It was addressed to him from the Family Bureau. Taemin opened it. It explained, in polite and gentle detail, that he need no longer fear unwelcome advances from one Kim Jonghyun, who had been permanently removed from his presence and relocated elsewhere. The letter concluded by wishing Taemin a swift recovery from the stress which had led him to so unhealthily fixate on the zoo tiger, and offered the future services of the Bureau to him should he ever need them again.

So Jonghyun really was dead.  _Permanently relocated_ , hah. Taemin knew a euphemism when he saw one.

At least now he understood what Jonghyun had been doing yesterday. He’d been acting, presenting himself as the source of Taemin’s stress so that they would take  _him_  away instead of Taemin.

He’d  _sacrificed_  himself. Taemin went inside, went through the kitchen and sat down on the living room couch. He read through the letter again, memorizing each hateful phrase. Then he ripped it in half, flung it on the floor and began to cry.

He hadn’t cried in years of his own volition. He’d forgotten how much he hated it, hated the stuffy nose and reddened eyes and mucus clogging up his throat. He curled up on the couch, dragged the fringed throw over his body and couldn’t stop crying. This was  _his_  fault. Everything was his fault.  _Why_  had Jonghyun chosen to die for him? Hadn’t he known that Taemin wasn’t worth it? Taemin hated Jonghyun for doing this. Hated him and missed him and maybe it was  _himself_ he hated, because Jonghyun had been a beautiful soul who did not deserve any of Taemin’s resentment.

Taemin cried himself ragged, cried himself to sleep. And when he slept, he did not dream of tigers, but of Jonghyun, smiling and laughing and loving, and that was perhaps the worst nightmare of all.

~~~

  
He woke a few hours later when the door banged open and the distinctive sounds of Minho and Kibum came filtering in. Taemin opened his eyes but did not bother to move. He felt too tired to do anything but lay here forever. His chest hurt. His eyes ached. He sniffled back a noseful of mucus and thought about Jonghyun. Then he buried his head in his arms and started to cry again.

“…Taemin?” This was Minho’s voice, astonished. “Taemin, are you all right? What’s wrong?”

Taemin didn’t look up. He couldn’t. A moment later, he felt Minho’s hand on his back, rubbing soothing circles between his shoulderblades. Taemin couldn’t help it then. He slid off the couch and onto the floor where Minho was kneeling, and flung himself into his husband’s arms. Minho caught him and held him, making shushing noises and stroking his back, trying desperately to calm him down.

From somewhere behind Minho, there was a soft rustle of paper. Taemin presumed that this was Kibum, picking up and reading the torn halves of the letter from the Bureau. Taemin didn’t care. He cried helplessly into Minho’s shoulder, soaking Minho’s sweater with tears and snot. It was disgusting. Taemin was disgusting. Why was Minho holding him like this? Minho should put his hands around Taemin’s throat and squeeze his life away. Taemin had killed Jonghyun by being too clueless to realize what had been happening until too late. He deserved no less than death himself.

“What happened?” Minho murmured, his voice very anxious. “Taemin, baby, please tell me what’s wrong? What happened to you?”

Taemin took a breath. Somehow, the whole story came out, tumbling into the air between bouts of crying and a voice hoarse with tears. He explained about the agent, and Jonghyun, and Jonghyun and the agent, and the market, and finally the letter today. He explained everything, then dissolved into hiccupping weak tears again, too exhausted to cry as hard as he had been doing earlier.

“I’m so sorry,” Minho whispered finally. His arms were shaking around Taemin’s body. “Shit, Taemin, I’m sorry. This is all my fault. I didn’t even  _know_  you were so unhappy you were going to the zoo that much- I’m a piece of fucking  _shit_ , I didn’t take care of you properly at fucking  _all_ \- and now someone’s  _died_  because of it- because of  _me-_ ”

“Shut up,” whispered Taemin, aching. “Shut up, it’s my fault, not yours. The zookeeper told me to stay away, and I didn’t. I didn’t realize what Jonghyun was doing last night, either. I should’ve stopped him. I should’ve- it’s  _my_  fault he’s dead, not yours.”

“Be quiet,  _both_  of you,” said a sudden strained voice from behind them. Taemin lifted his head to see Kibum glaring at them, the halves of letter clenched tightly in one fist. “It’s  _my_  fault.”

Taemin bit down on his lip before he could say something along the lines of  _hell yeah it is, you fucking homewrecker_. He’d been fixated on the tiger even before Kibum had come into their lives. It wasn’t fair to pin anything on Kibum either. Taemin himself was the only one to blame here.

“It’s  _my_ fault,” Kibum said again into the silence. He swallowed hard. “But maybe I can fix it.”

“ _Fix_  it?” Taemin found himself yelling furiously, the words scraping jaggedly into the still air. “You can’t fix anything! Jonghyun is fucking  _dead_!”

“No, he’s not.”

“He is, too!  _You_  read the letter-”

“He’s not dead,” Kibum repeated sternly. He took a breath. “Or, at least, I don’t think he is. And if he  _isn’t_ dead, I know where to find him. If we move quickly enough- tonight- we may even be able to rescue him.”

Taemin stared at him, speechless. Minho shuffled around a bit so that he too could turn his head and stare at Kibum as well.

“Let’s go into the kitchen and make some tea,” said Kibum softly. “Then I’ll tell you a story about a tiger, and a pair of men whom that tiger came to love.”

Taemin’s breath went out of his lungs in a shocked  _whoosh_. He barely heard Minho’s confused questioning. He locked gazes with Kibum instead, and this time when he saw the flicker of orange and black stripes across smooth human flesh, felt an immense, irresistible curiosity rise up within him.

“C’mon,” Taemin said. He broke out of Minho’s embrace and tugged his husband to his feet. “Let’s go listen to what Kibum has to say.”  


~~~

The story Kibum told went something like this:

Once upon a time, in a not so distant city, there lived a restless child, one who was always pushing at the boundaries of what was socially acceptable, always longing for something indecipherably  _more_ , and never quite finding it. He was a soft-edged trapezoidal child in a square world, unable to content himself with fitting into any of the slots that life demanded of him.

The child’s parents were high-ranking Party members who bribed the Family Bureau into sending their only offspring to a prestigious medical university. There, the child (for he was still immature in heart, if not in age) married a longtime friend, the marital assignment’s approval acquired by means of a packet of inherited money slipped into a corrupt bureaucrat’s desk.

The university required its students to spend time interning at a nearby city hospital. The child put in the requisite amount of hours, and more. For the hospital was full of  _people_ , scared and lonely and grieving people, who had suffered enough to permit them to slip the social façade of perpetual cheer and reveal their darkened hearts. The child was fascinated. Here, at last, was  _reality_ , and not the glittering veneer of false utopia which the Government ensured everyone upheld out of fear.

And so it was here, in the heart of pain, that the child began to dream.

He would dream himself out of his body and find himself staring out at the world through his patients’ eyes. Only certain patients seemed to be able to accommodate a second presence in their bodies, but there was no logic as to which ones could receive him and which ones couldn’t. Nor did he always dream himself  _into_  someone else; sometimes he merely found himself wandering about the hospital as an insubstantial, unseen ghost, when he  _ought_  to have been at home, asleep in his apartment.

The child learned many things on these out-of-body trips. Most importantly, he learned of the rebel cell slowly establishing itself a secret foothold in the hospital administration. And he came to empathize with these rebels, for they were not the heartless, malicious terrorists he’d always been told they were. They were doctors and nurses and janitors, who wished only to care for people as best they could, without the Government ordering them whom to treat and whom to let die, which magics and medicines they could use and which they couldn’t, the decisions made on a bribed bureaucrat’s whim.

The child revealed himself to the rebels in time and began to aid them. He did not reveal his dreaming to them, however. That, he kept to himself, not even telling his beloved spouse of his strange ability to slip free of his physical self while asleep.

But the rebel cell had a spy, and that spy sold them out. The entire cell and all their close friends and family were duly caught and executed. All, that was, except one.

The child alone found himself dragged to a secret operating room. He cried as they strapped him down, his heart full of despair at the memory of his comrades and husband being slaughtered before his eyes. And this despair was infused with self-hating guilt, for if he had not involved himself with the rebels, his beloved husband at least might still be alive.

And so the child died that night on that secret operating table. His innocence was shredded and his body annihilated, leaving nothing of either behind. According to the official public record, Kim Kibum had vanished like any suspected troublemaker; according to the less public official record, he had been executed with the rest of the traitors, his body cremated alongside theirs.

Only the most classified of records kept the true story on the rolls. For, you see, Kim Kibum’s  _soul_  had not died alongside his innocence and physical body.

After all, the zoo was in need of a tiger.

~~~

  
At this point in the story, Kibum paused to bring the tea he’d been steeping over to the table. Minho didn’t touch the mug, instead staring at Kibum with wide and incredulous eyes. Taemin did sip at the hot and steaming liquid, feeling strangely calm. His fears of being insane faded. If he  _had_  lost his marbles, at least Kibum had lost them along with him.

“Are you telling me that you got turned into a  _tiger_?” Minho demanded. “What the fuck kind of tale  _is_  this?”

“They didn’t directly transform me into one, no,” Kibum said placidly. His hands were shaking, however, belying his mask of serenity. “They took my soul out of my body and put it in an empty tiger’s shell they’d created for that purpose.”

“That’s  _ridiculous_.”

“Is it really?” Kibum arched an eyebrow, seemingly unbothered by Minho’s skepticism. “Is it any stranger than them having the ability to temporarily switch your reproductive systems? The Government has long had very advanced biological magic at their disposal. Besides, we all know how tattered the world ecosystems are. Do you really think there’s enough animals left in the wild to furnish all our zoos? The Government had to find other ways to supply that kind of entertainment, and so-.”

“Are you telling me  _all_  the animals in zoos are actually people?” Taemin asked, shocked into sudden horrified speech. He remembered the nighttime noises of the animals he’d dreamed of, and felt sick to think of what those sounds actually meant. How many times had he heard those imprisoned creatures cry out in the dead of night, creatures who were not actually creatures in the least?

“Not  _all_  of them,” said Kibum. His fingers spasmed against the handle of his mug. “But most of the animals there have human souls trapped inside, yes.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Minho again. “Taemin, I can’t believe you’re actually buying this. And Kibum, you can’t  _actually_ -”

Kibum looked at him. There were suddenly tiger ears sprouting from his head where none had been before. Minho fell quiet.

Kibum looked back down at his tea.

“Never mind me,” he said. “The point is, they brought a new prisoner into the facility last night. One of the bears has been sick for a while and is scheduled to be put down this week. I think they mean to replace her, since they always like to have at least two animals per exhibit. People enjoy watching us interact.”

Taemin’s eyes fixed on Kibum with a hopeful fervor.

“Do you think the new prisoner is Jonghyun?”

“I hope so,” said Kibum. “Jinki told me the prisoner’s name was Kim Jonghyun, but that’s a fairly common name, so I’d need to see a visual of your Jonghyun to be sure.”

Taemin frowned. “I don’t have any pictures…”

“Pictures aren’t necessary.” Kibum reached out a hand and carefully touched Taemin’s wrist. “Just think about him, and I’ll dream the memory with you.”

“What?” said Minho. “Who’s Jinki? What are you talking about?”

Taemin ignored him. He closed his eyes instead and brought Jonghyun’s face to mind. He thought about his missing friend in his entirety, about the playful sparkle of Jonghyun’s smile and the dogged determination of his speech. He thought about the skill Jonghyun had had in the kitchen, and the skill he’d had at cheering Taemin up. Taemin thought about finding him and freeing him, and  _ached_  suddenly to be on his way already to doing so.

Nor was he the only one in his head with such an ache; Taemin could feel a second presence lingering alongside his soul, now that he knew to look for it. Kibum longed to be away on their rescue mission every bit as much as Taemin did- though for far more selfish reasons.

Then the second presence was gone, leaving Taemin alone in his skin once more.

“Sorry,” said Kibum. He rubbed Taemin’s wrist in apology. “But the image you have of your friend matches that of the prisoner I saw while ghosting around earlier.” He let out a breath. “Judging by the timing for the usual procedure, I’d say they’ll probably operate on him sometime tomorrow. If we stage a rescue attempt late tonight when the staff is at a low, we should be able to rescue him.”

“And you,” said Taemin. He pulled his hand away from Kibum’s touch. “You want us to free you, too.”

Kibum winced, but nodded in admission of this wish.

“Yeah,” he said. “I won’t deny I’d like that to happen too.”

Minho spoke then.

“As much as I want you and Jonghyun free,” he said. “I do have one question to ask.” He frowned. “Who is  _we_? Do you seriously expect Taemin and I to do this kind of thing? Neither of us has any experience being secret spy people-”

“If you want to get this done, you two are the only ones who can do it,” Kibum answered. “I still have some pull with some rebels who owe favours to me, but they won’t risk entering the zoo itself to save a bunch of people they don’t know- especially not with the place as covered by security cameras as it is. They can’t afford to be identified as rebels; they’ve got their own lives and missions to look after. I know I  _can_  talk them into taking us to safety afterward- there are some hidden communities in the mountains they shuttle fugitives to sometimes- but they would never agree to do the actual zoo break itself.”

“So you want the two of  _us_  to do it,” said Minho disbelievingly. “Even though neither of us knows  _anything_  about freeing prisoners from secret Government jails-”

“ _I’ll_  help you, of course,” said Kibum. He clearly meant to be reassuring. “I’ll be a lot of help, since I’m just an illusion and can’t get hurt if I spring any security measures by mistake. Jinki- one of the zookeepers- will help us too, especially if I offer to take him to safety after as well. He  _hates_  working at the zoo- he used to be a conservation field researcher, you know, before they reassigned him here.”

Minho ignored this.

“So,” he said. “A ghost, a zookeeper and two random citizens are gonna break into a top-secret facility, free a tiger and a prisoner, then waltz out to meet some sketchy terrorists and follow them to an illegal mountain commune.” He flung up his hands. “What could  _possibly_  go wrong?”

“They’re  _freedom fighters_ , not  _terrorists_ ,” said Kibum. “They don’t kill innocents on purpose. And- and-” he hesitated for a moment, then forged on. “-and think of your baby, Minho love. It could grow up  _free_  in the mountains, away from all the controlling nonsense the Government inflicts on us. Isn’t that worth a little risk? Isn’t saving Jonghyun and myself worth it too?”

Minho pressed his lips together and said nothing. Kibum continued to gaze at him pleadingly, but Taemin didn’t bother. He knew the fight was won. Minho had a soft spot for Kibum and the baby a mile wide. There was just one thing more Taemin wanted to know before they began hashing out the finer details of their rescue mission plan.

“You didn’t just dream yourself into this form, right?” he asked. “You dreamed yourself into being someone else, too.”

Kibum turned to look at him. “Yes,” he said quietly. “That’s right.”

Taemin let out a breath. He remembered Kibum’s lips on his, Kibum’s hips grinding against his own, Kibum’s hands stroking down his body. He remembered it twice, in fact, and wondered at how  _hypocritical_  his anger had seemed to Kibum the second time, when they’d already fucked each other once before, in a different guise.

“What?” said Minho, lost. “What do you mean? And Kibum, what are you going to tell your sister about all of this? Surely she’ll worry about you if you just  _vanish_ , so are you gonna go over there tonight and-”

“Minho,” said Kibum very gently. “Didn’t I tell you? I’ve never  _had_  a sister.”

His illusory form shimmered and changed again, morphing into the alluring curls, winged eyeliner and blood-scarlet lips of Dr. Kim Gwiboon. Taemin watched this transformation with a profound lack of surprise. Minho spluttered wordlessly, too shocked for coherency.

“I wanted to help people,” said Kibum. He shifted back to his own form. “I’ve always wanted to help people. I figured that if I dreamed myself into a new identity with a different gender and name, the Government wouldn’t notice, and I could put my medical training to use even  _while_  still physically trapped in the zoo.”

“So,” said Minho. “So you were- all this time, you were  _both_ -”

“Yeah,” said Kibum. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t want to mix my personal and professional lives again, because it didn’t turn out so well for me before.”

Minho nodded. He still didn’t seem to know what to say. Kibum gazed at him for a moment, then glanced at Taemin, who shrugged. Kibum’s confessions had come as a relief to him, easing the suspicions Taemin had had about the state of his own sanity. They were bound to be more of a shock to Minho, however.

Kibum sighed.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s start planning our trip tonight.”

~~~

  
Taemin did not sleep that night. Minho napped a bit, for in between the shock of Kibum’s revelations and the strain of his pregnancy, he was exhausted and needed his rest. Taemin packed two backpacks full of things while Minho slept. He knew they would be able to escape with only what they could carry. Fortunately, Taemin wasn’t particularly attached to much and Minho- well. Minho could deal with leaving some things behind.

Mostly, however, Taemin sat on the couch and worried. He worried about how Minho would react to learning about Taemin’s dreams of Kibum. He had a feeling Minho wouldn’t like them.  _Taemin_ wasn’t sure he liked them, not now that he knew what they truly meant. It was unnerving to think of how Kibum must have woken up in Taemin’s skin while Taemin had dreamed himself into the tiger’s. Had Kibum  _meant_  to switch bodies like that? Had it been an accident? Or had Kibum become every bit as addicted to dreaming of Taemin as Taemin was to dreaming of him?

Taemin closed his eyes. It was at least better to worry about Minho and Kibum than it was to worry about the practical concerns of this dangerous rescue attempt. He was used to worrying about things concerning Minho and Kibum. That worry was a familiar kind of dread, the cold and achy sort, without any edge of incipient panic.

At one in the morning, he and Minho slipped their backpacks on and left. Minho had been oddly quiet all evening and night. Taemin stayed quiet as well. He wasn’t sure what to make of Minho’s silence. Perhaps Minho was upset with him for nearly getting Jonghyun killed and making this whole risky venture necessary. That was probably it. It could be that Minho was just still in shock from all the recent events, but Taemin felt the first explanation was much more likely.

They met Kibum as planned at the back gates of the zoo. Jinki was hovering just behind him, twitchy and very visibly nervous.

“Come in,” said Kibum. He swung the gates open. “We’ve managed to hack you into the system as a pair of electricians come to repair a malfunctioning cage. Very high priority. It should be a couple hours until anyone realizes anything’s wrong- and by that time we should all be well out of here and free.”

“All right,” said Taemin. He took a deep breath to settle his nerves. “Let’s do this.”

~~~

  
The zoo was not completely empty; it required a twenty-four hour staff to keep everything running and its captives fed and looked after. But at one-thirty in the morning, very  _little_  staff was present, especially compared to the peak times of visiting hours during the day.

Getting into the zoo proper had been easy. Getting into the secret facility where condemned prisoners were sent to be experimented upon was much more difficult. Jinki had to use his zookeeper’s ID and wheedle his way past a number of security guards. Kibum helped by changing shape and popping in and out of existence at convenient times, opening doors locked from the inside and pretending to be a guard himself when necessary.

The facility itself was terrifying. There was no pretense at civility. The walls, floor and ceiling were all bare, gray concrete. Alarming instruments were hung on wall-racks here and there, as were flashing electro-magical panels of ominous technology. The place gave Taemin the creeps. He suppressed the urge to sidle closer to Minho. Being overly annoying and clingy wouldn’t help anything.

“We should split up now,” Kibum said finally, after they came to yet another corridor of bare walls and worn floors. “There are four blocks of cells; we should each take one and see if we can find Jonghyun there.”

Taemin felt nervous. He nodded anyway, because Kibum seemed to know what he was doing, which was much more than Taemin could say for himself. Jinki was sweating and nervous too. Taemin couldn’t tell how Minho was feeling. His husband was still being quieter than usual. It was worrying.

Taemin and Jinki set off in one direction, leaving Minho and Kibum to continue down the main corridor. Then Jinki took one hall of cells, and Taemin the other. There were flashing keypads by the door of each cell. Kibum had managed to acquire the master-code to open any of the doors. Taemin didn’t know how he’d done this, and didn’t want to know. Kibum had looked too queasy for comfort while making them all recite the code until they’d memorized it, as if the very feel of the numbers on his tongue recalled unsavory memories.

Taemin went to each cell and peered in through the little window in the door. All of the cells so far had been empty. Some had rather alarming stains splashed against the concrete. Taemin tried not to think too hard about those.

The twelfth cell he checked came up a success. Jonghyun was curled up on the floor at the back of the cell, shivering against the cold, bare concrete. Taemin pumped a fist in the air out of excitement, then went to type in the master-code.

The heavy metal door slid open, retracting sideways into the wall with a prickle of unknown magic against Taemin’s skin. Jonghyun woke at the sound and lifted his head. He blinked blearily at the suddenly clear path into the corridor.

“…Taemin? Is that  _you_?”

“Yeah,” said Taemin. He peered anxiously in at Jonghyun. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” said Jonghyun. He got to his feet, rubbing his upper arms to stave off the chill. “I dunno where I am, though. They gassed me with something, then hauled me in here and did some creepy medical shit to me. Why are  _you_  here?”

“To rescue you,” said Taemin. “You’re at the zoo; Kibum and one of the zookeepers let us in.”

“The zoo? What? Why? And who’s  _us_?”

“Us is Minho and me.” Taemin smiled, a sense of incredible relief flooding up within him. “We’re gonna follow some rebels out of here and go live faraway together in some mountains. It’s gonna be okay.”

“I dunno about  _okay_ ,” muttered Jonghyun. “But that does sound better than being executed or experimented on or whatever the hell they were gonna do to me here. Where is everyone else you came with?”

“We split up so we could check each cell block out as fast as possible,” Taemin explained. He gestured impatiently. “C’mon, let’s go catch up with them and get out of here.”

“All right,” said Jonghyun. His mouth quirked up with amusement at Taemin’s excitement. “Sounds good to me!”

Taemin watched as Jonghyun strode forward with an eager step, the cold apparently forgotten in his joy at being free. Taemin himself danced happily in place, arms spread wide to catch his friend in an impulsive embrace the moment Jonghyun got near enough.

Just as Jonghyun stepped through the doorway, however, bright green bars of magic appeared out of nowhere. They crackled with electrical energy and caught fragile human flesh between them, then burned brighter with a white flare of heat. Jonghyun screamed, a long shrill scream of agony, and  _roasted_  before Taemin’s horrified eyes, scorching from the outside in as the magic electrocuted and smoked him past all human endurance.

And then, just as suddenly as the bars had come, they faded away. Jonghyun’s corpse tumbled to the floor- a black, white and crumbling mess, stinking of burnt flesh. Taemin stared at it, wide-eyed and frozen, and couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. His arms were still spread wide in preparation for a hug that would never come, not now that Jonghyun was dead, again, and for  _real_  this time.

“Taemin?” This was Jinki, running back up the corridor, puffing for breath. “Taemin, what happened? I heard a scream-”

He skidded to a stop and ceased talking. Taemin dropped his arms, slow and shaking. Burnt bodies were awful to look at. They were awful to smell. They were awful to contemplate, because only a few short seconds ago, Jonghyun had been alive and smiling and ready to be  _free_.

“Holy fucking  _shit_ ,” said Jinki finally. “Taemin, I’m... that’s your friend, isn’t it? I’m so sorry… what happened?”

“He just,” said Taemin. He took a big, gulping breath of air, throat scraped too dry to cry. “He was just walking out, and these bars of green magic stuff came out of nowhere and just. They  _fried_  him.”

Jinki put a hand on Taemin’s shoulder. Taemin bowed his head and blinked rapidly. He wanted to weep and couldn’t. There seemed to be no emotion left in him. How many times was it possible for one person to kill another? Taemin had killed Jonghyun twice now. But Jonghyun was too dead to kill again.

“Let’s go,” said Jinki softly. “We can’t take the body with us, and there’s nothing more we can do for him now. You can mourn him later, all right?”

Taemin nodded. He let Jinki lead him away. The stink of burnt flesh lingered in his nostrils as they walked, and it was the most inescapably horrible thing Taemin had ever smelled.

~~~

  
They met Minho and Kibum in the corridor a floor down. They had just time enough for Jinki to relay the awful news of Jonghyun’s death before the alarms suddenly went off. Security guards immediately flooded the place, guns blazing with a killing light.

The four of them ran for it. They sprinted down the maze of hallways as quickly as they could go, desperate to escape death at the hands of the guards. They ran so quickly, in fact, that they lost each other halfway. Minho and Taemin turned down one corridor, Jinki and Kibum another.

Taemin and Minho continued to run and run and run, until finally Minho grabbed Taemin’s arm and hauled him abruptly sideways into a closet, slamming the door shut behind them. The guards rounded the corner a moment later. Their footsteps pounded hard down the hall as they continued to run, believing their prey to have turned a corner ahead, not vanished into a supply closet.

Except that it was not a supply closet at all, but a tiny alcove connected to an ill-smelling chute. And Taemin had been flung with such force into the tight space that he had fallen into that chute, unable to stop himself from slipping on the floor and tumbling in, caught off-balance by his heavy backpack’s weight.

He clung to the top of the chute now by the tips of his fingers, dangling perilously above a steeply-angled slide. Minho turned and saw his predicament just in time to lunge forward and catch Taemin by the wrist, keeping him from plummeting down into the darkness of what lay below.

“Shit!” Minho swore, fingers tightening painfully against Taemin’s skin. “I didn’t realize there was a fucking  _hole_  in here- c’mon, work with me, I’ll pull you up-”

Taemin stared at the straining bulge of Minho’s biceps beneath the long sleeves of his shirt. He felt very tired all of sudden, and let out a quiet sigh. Then he went limp in Minho’s grip, jerking his husband forward a few centimeters from the sudden pull of dead weight.

“Just let me go,” said Taemin wearily. “I’m not worth it.”

“What?” Minho stared down at him, wide-eyed. “What are you  _talking_  about? Who knows what’s down there? C’mon, try and pull yourself up a bit- I’ll get you the rest of the way-”

“No,” said Taemin. He sighed. “Did you know I killed Jonghyun? I should’ve checked to make sure there weren’t any security measures left before telling him to come out of the cell, but I didn’t.  _And_  I landed him in here in the first place. And-”

“Shut up,” said Minho. He squeezed Taemin’s wrist tighter. “It was  _not_  your fault, okay?”

“It was,” said Taemin. “You don’t have to pretend it wasn’t. You don’t have to pretend anything anymore.”

“I don’t understand-”

“Just let go of me.” Taemin breathed in, breathed out. He felt very calm, very certain of himself. “I know I’ve been nothing but an annoyance to you for ages. Let go of me and go love Kibum and raise that thing with him. Be happy. You don’t need me for that. I’d only be in the way.”

“Would you  _stop_  calling our baby a ‘thing’?” Minho demanded, voice rising. “And stop talking nonsense. I am  _not_  letting go of you!”

“I’ll probably die if I fall down this hole,” Taemin said reasonably. “I wouldn’t upset you anymore if I were dead. I wouldn’t accidentally kill you either, the way I killed Jonghyun.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Minho’s voice acquired an inexplicable edge of baffled fear. “Do you even hear what you’re saying? You did  _not_  kill Jonghyun, you aren’t going to kill me, and I  _will_  be upset if you fall down this hole-  _ow_!”

Taemin, tired of listening to these lies, brought his free hand up and slammed it hard into Minho’s wrist. Minho yelled with pain, and his hand spasmed out of reflex, involuntarily loosening his grip just long enough for Taemin to slip free and tumble down the almost vertical chute.

He closed his eyes as he fell, and did not listen to the way Minho was screaming his name from up above.

~~~

  
It was a long fall, but the end of it was cushioned by foul-smelling softness. Taemin lay in the dark squishiness and realized that he must have fallen into a garbage disposal unit somehow. This likely meant he would be incinerated soon, when the flames came to burn the trash. That was alright. It would be a painful way to die, but he felt he deserved no less.

The sense of serenity from earlier persisted. Taemin found himself smiling up into the darkness. It was going to be all right. Soon, he wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore.

Minho wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore either. Soon he’d be free to start a new life with Kibum and the baby. Taemin let out a quiet sigh. His jealousy from before seemed very petty now, the silly, clutching desperation of a man who’d only realized he loved something after he’d neglected, resented and lost it.

Taemin closed his eyes and relaxed into the filthy heap of garbage. He wondered when the flames would come to consume him. He hoped it wasn’t long. The sooner death came to make everything all right, the better.

His breathing evened out into sleep, and he began to dream.

~~~

  
He dreamed himself into the tiger’s enclosure again, only he was in human form for once, sitting cross-legged on one of the medium-sized gray boulders by the pond. Kibum was kneeling at his feet, gazing up at him. There was something translucent about the scenery around them which informed Taemin that this was a dream and not reality. He was in a melding of Kibum’s mind and his own, not physically present in the tiger’s cage.

“If I’d known you were fucking suicidal, I’d’ve kept a closer eye on you,” said Kibum finally. The wind stirred his hair, made it drift softly in a surreal breeze. “Do you realize just how much Minho is freaking out right now?”

“He shouldn’t be,” said Taemin, unconcerned. “Why are you here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be escaping right now?”

“No,” said Kibum. “Jinki is still trying to figure out how to get me out of the tiger enclosure without triggering the same thing that killed Jonghyun. We think it’s some sort of spell which kills a tagged prisoner when it senses a physical boundary has been crossed, but we’re not sure. Neither of us are magical engineers, and we don’t exactly have time to find someone who is.”

“Oh,” said Taemin. He wasn’t sure what to make of that, but he supposed it wasn’t his problem anymore. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Kibum paused. He looked very pretty in the dream-light, Taemin thought absently, but then, he’d always been pretty everywhere. “You know, there was a point in time when I wanted to die, too.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm. It was just after I’d been forced into this body. Tiger shells don’t accept human souls very easily, and the rejection  _hurts_. It didn’t help either that I’d just watched most of the people I was closest to be murdered before my eyes. I felt like it was my fault that my husband in particular had been executed- they only killed him because of his association with me, y’know?”

“Yeah,” said Taemin with a soft sigh. He thought of Jonghyun’s wide smile, and ached. “I know.”

Kibum reached up and gently curled a hand over Taemin’s ankle. Then he said:

“All I wanted to do was let the tiger body kick my soul out so I could die like I deserved. But then I started wondering  _why_  I wanted to give up so badly. What was the point? I’d wanted to make a difference in the world, but what difference would dying make? I’d be useless dead. Alive… maybe I could still do  _something_.”

He paused. Then, when Taemin didn’t say anything, kept talking.

“Remember how I told you before that I'd discovered I could dream myself out of my body while at university? But back then, I couldn’t touch or smell or taste anything when I dreamed, and no one could  _see_  me, either. People walked right through me like I wasn’t even there. But in this tiger body… now I can dream myself  _real_. I have  _substance_  when I dream myself away. I did some research on it to learn why, actually, and it turns out that tigers are a catalyst for such dreaming. Once upon a time, people who could dream would bond with the creatures in order to dream themselves tangible. Isn’t that neat?”

“I guess,” said Taemin indifferently. “Is there a point to this?”

“Yeah,” said Kibum. “The point is that I realized I could still  _help_  people like I’d always wanted to, now that I could dream myself real. I could get in contact with some surviving rebel friends and fake myself a doctor’s license. I could acquire enough money to give to a lonely couple who wanted a baby they couldn’t afford- and I could befriend that couple, because I'd come to love them both and wish them well.”

He sighed all of a sudden, and lowered his gaze. “Unfortunately, it’s hard to decipher reality when you’re dreaming. I might have meant to help you and Minho, but I think I just made everything worse. Dreaming is like being high or drunk, you know? Things seem logical that aren’t really, and morality is hell to properly work out.”

“I still don’t see the point of all this,” said Taemin. “I don’t care about your life history. It’s not like  _I_  have any potential to do good in the world if I happened to keep living. I can’t dream, and even if I could, I’d just fuck things up.”

“You can’t dream on your own, true,” said Kibum. “Though you  _are_  the only person I’ve ever met who could receive  _my_  dreams so strongly. But you can still make a difference if you live, Taemin. Your survival would make  _me_  happy, at the very least.” His voice softened. “And it would make Minho happy too.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious. He loves you, you know.”

Taemin laughed- actually  _laughed_ \- at that. Kibum frowned. Then he launched into some spiel or other on the subject of Minho’s feelings, which Taemin did not bother to listen to. He went over this second part of Kibum’s story in his head instead, replaying it with some scorn. He was not a doctor or a dreamer like Kibum. He wasn’t anything. The only way he could make a difference was by dying,  _why_  couldn’t Kibum see that?

Then he paused, caught on a couple pieces of information that Kibum had divulged. Maybe, Taemin thought, there  _was_  a chance he could be of help by continuing to live. It was a small chance, but one definitely worth trying.

He came to a decision.

“Can you get me out of this garbage unit?” he asked.

Kibum blinked, then smiled wide with relieved joy.

“Of course! And here I thought you’d never ask.”

~~~

  
Taemin woke to the sound of giant doors scraping apart. Light intruded abruptly into the darkness of the garbage pit. Taemin squinted into it. He could just barely make out the silhouette of Kibum standing there, fingers pressed to the control pad just beside the doorway.

“C’mon,” said Kibum. “Let’s go.”

Taemin pushed himself to his feet and went out of the garbage unit. Kibum smiled at him the same way he had in the dream, a glorious smile that lit up his face and made even the garbage smell almost sweet. Taemin ignored that smile. There were more important things to focus on.

They walked through the facility again, occasionally ducking around corners to avoid patrols of guards. It wasn’t long before they arrived at the back hallway where Jinki and Minho were waiting, their backpacks resting on the floor by the nearest wall. Taemin swung his off as well and set it down, relieved to be free of the weight of it.

“Taemin!” Minho exclaimed. He ran forward and caught Taemin up in a tight, crushing hug. “You’re okay! Holy  _shit_ , if you  _ever_  scare me like that again, I swear to  _God_ -”

“You don’t believe in God,” Taemin said. He put his arms awkwardly around Minho, baffled by both the strength of the hug and the cracking emotion in Minho’s voice. “Calm down, it’s all right, I’m fine.”

Minho didn’t calm down. Instead, he held Taemin tighter against him and breathed raggedly into Taemin’s ear. Taemin turned his head sideways and pressed his face against Minho’s neck. He could hear Jinki and Kibum conversing quietly in the background, something about how Jinki still could not think of a way to deactivate the lethal security measures surrounding all the cells and enclosures.

Taemin sighed and nuzzled his nose against Minho’s throat.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought it’d make everything easier for you if I died, but I guess not.”

“Of course not,” said Minho. “How could you  _ever_  think that?” His voice cracked again. “I know we have problems, but we can figure them out, okay? Dying is  _not_  an acceptable solution.”

“If you say so,” said Taemin. He felt very tired. “We’ve spent the last six years falling apart. I don’t think there  _is_  any way to fix things between us. Not anymore.”

“There is  _always_  a way to fix things,” said Minho. Taemin felt him swallow hard, Adam’s apple bobbing against Taemin’s face. “I just didn’t know you  _wanted_  to fix them. The way you act… I thought sometimes that you didn’t even  _like_  me. Nothing I do ever makes you happy, and you’re never interested in anything I am, and you didn’t even trust me enough to tell me how unhappy you are with everything…”

“I’m sorry,” said Taemin. He stirred in Minho’s arms, surprised at how bitter his husband sounded. “I won’t annoy you any more now, I promise. That’s why you should have just let me go-”

“Oh, baby,” said Minho, and he sounded so weary, so  _resigned_ , that Taemin didn’t know what to say. “I’m sure I’ve hurt you too, and you don’t see  _me_  trying to kill myself, do you? We can work things out. Maybe it’ll be easier once we’re free of here. We won’t have to worry about roles or anything, and that should help.”

“Why d’you  _want_  to work things out?” Taemin managed finally. His throat felt closed up and tight. “You and Kibum…”

“I think all three of us can figure something out,” said Minho. “You and he have a connection too, don’t you? Kibum was telling me just now that you’ve been dreaming together… he called you his soulmate, did you know that? He says he’s never been able to dream so intensely with anyone else before.” His voice brightened. “It’s only the Government that says just two people can be married. Once we’re free, that won’t matter anymore. We can  _all_  have each other, then.”

“That explains why Kibum might want me,” said Taemin. “I still don’t know why  _you_ do.”

“Oy, you two,” Kibum called suddenly, his conversation with Jinki over. “Can we save this for later? Time’s running out, and we still need to get me free.”

Minho and Taemin let go of each other and looked over, distracted from their discussion.

“Did you guys figure out how to get through the spell?” Minho asked. “I don’t want to risk getting you killed, too.”

“No, we didn’t,” said Jinki, frustrated. “But maybe if we go up to the cage, we can take a closer look, and-”

It was now or never. Taemin took a breath and cut Jinki off mid-sentence.

“It’s okay,” he announced. “I know how to do it.”

The others all turned to stare at him.

“What?” said Jinki. “ _How_?”

Taemin shrugged. “I don’t want to say, in case it doesn’t work,” he said. “But we should move quickly. You and Minho should stay here, and Kibum can take me up to the tiger cage.”

Kibum frowned and opened his mouth to speak. Minho, however, beat him to it.

“I am  _not_  staying behind while you risk yourself again,” said Minho firmly. “We’re all going together, okay?”

Taemin shook his head. He stepped forward to splay a hand over Minho’s still-flat belly.

“No,” he said. “It’s too dangerous, and you’ve got more than just yourself to think about. Jinki knows the way out. If Kibum and I don’t come back within an hour, you two get yourselves to safety, all right?” He patted Minho’s stomach. “You three, I mean, that thing included.”

“Don’t call the baby a  _thing_ ,” said Minho automatically, but without any real annoyance this time. He didn’t look happy, but he sighed and didn’t argue the point further. Taemin found himself truly grateful about the baby for the first time. He had feeling that if Minho hadn’t been pregnant, there would have been no way to talk him out of coming along, and that would have complicated everything.

“Taemin,” said Kibum quietly. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yep,” said Taemin. He turned to face the other end of the corridor. “Let’s go-  _eep_!”

He let out a yelp when Minho dragged him back into one more bone-crushing hug. Minho kissed Taemin’s cheek, then released him again.

“You smell like shit,” he said, swallowing hard. “Stay safe, okay?”

“I  _did_ fall into a garbage pit,” said Taemin. He tried to give Minho a reassuring smile. It didn’t work very well. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“I can’t help it,” said Minho. He reached out and gently brushed a strand of Taemin’s hair back behind one ear, eyes wide and anxious. “I love you.”

Taemin stared at him. Minho seemed to realize what he’d just said. He quickly pulled his hand back, glancing away with embarrassment.

“We’re gonna go now,” said Taemin finally. He cleared his throat, not knowing what else to do. “We’ll stay safe, I promise.”

Minho nodded, the muscles of his face very tense. Taemin found suddenly that he didn’t want to go. But he couldn’t stay. He knew what he had to do, and lingering here any longer wouldn’t help with it.

He took Kibum’s arm, and they set off down the corridor. Jinki called a soft farewell as they rounded the corner and went out of sight. Minho said nothing, but then, Taemin hadn’t expected him to. They’d said enough to each other already.

The trip up and out of the facility was silent. Taemin and Kibum didn’t speak to each other as they dodged guards and carefully bypassed security measures. Even the seven-minute walk to the interior of the tiger enclosure was very quiet. Kibum, for once, didn’t seem to know what to say. Taemin didn’t either. That was all right. It didn’t matter.

Finally, they came to indoor cage where the tiger was kept when it wasn’t on display outside. The body was asleep in a corner of the cage, furry sides rising and falling as it slept. It was very odd to think that the soul of that body was standing next to Taemin right now, watching him with a troubled gaze.

“That electrocution spell is active here, too,” said Kibum finally. “I can feel it, now that I know what to look for. And I have absolutely no idea how to dismantle it.”

“I don’t either,” said Taemin. That strange calm from earlier was settling back into him now, making this easy. “We don’t have to dismantle it, though. The spell just stops that tiger body from coming out. It doesn’t do anything about souls.”

“My dreaming has a limited range, though,” said Kibum. “I want to go  _with_  you to the mountains. If you leave me here, I won’t be able to reach you anymore. You’ll be too far away.”

“I know,” said Taemin. “I wasn’t suggesting that  _you_  stay here.”

Kibum swallowed and looked away. Taemin waited. When there was only silence, he added:

“I know how badly you want to be free. Here’s your chance.  _Take_  it.”

“I can’t,” said Kibum. He shook his head. “I can’t do this to you.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Taemin. “Bored, maybe, because I can’t dream myself out of here like you can, but I’m used to being bored. The zoo won’t punish me for anything either; they’ll just think our rescue attempt failed. No one will know the difference.”

“Tigers don’t live as long as humans do,” Kibum said, trying another angle. “You’ll lose  _decades_ of your life-”

“And maybe I’d’ve been hit by a car in twenty years anyway,” said Taemin. “Stop complaining. Only one of us can leave here alive, and I’d rather it be you.”

“But I-”

“You make people happy,” said Taemin. He stared Kibum down, willing with all his might for the other to give in and accept that this was the way it had to be. “You make them better. You make them  _alive_. You told me that I could make a difference by living, didn’t you? Well, this is how. I can set you free to give Minho and the baby the happiness that I never could. They need you, and you know it.”

Kibum looked as if he were about to cry. That was wrong, so wrong. Taemin had never imagined that Kibum might cry. It hurt to see. He stepped close and took Kibum’s face in his hands, very gently.

“Please,” said Taemin softly. “I can’t do this without you.”

Kibum’s eyes were bright and shiny and wet. When he spoke, his voice wavered and was very thin.

“Haven’t you learned anything by now?” he asked. “Minho  _just_  told you he loved you. Are you going to abandon him, after that?  The two of you-”

“Love isn’t enough,” said Taemin. “A relationship needs more than that to work properly. You have what it takes to live happily with him. I don’t. As soon as all this is over, we’d just be back to resenting each other all over again.” He rested his forehead against Kibum’s. “Stop arguing with me. We’re wasting time.”

Kibum was quiet for a very long moment. Taemin stayed quiet as well. He understood Kibum’s soul well enough to know that selfishness would win out in the end. It was only a matter of time. Kibum had all the fierce will to live that Taemin lacked; it was this will that Taemin was counting on to work in his favor.

“All right,” said Kibum finally. He blinked back tears. “All right,  _fine_ , I’ll do it. Do you have anything you want me to tell Minho when I see him?”

Taemin considered that. Minho would probably be upset about this. He might even be upset enough to blame Kibum for it. Taemin couldn’t have that. He had to make Minho understand that this had been entirely Taemin’s decision, and that Kibum hadn’t forced him into it.

“Tell him I kept my promise,” Taemin decided. “Tell him that I’m alive, and that I won’t be annoying him anymore.” He paused, then added: “And tell him that if he raises that thing to slurp soup the same way he does, I will find a way to hunt him down and yell at him for instilling his bad eating manners into our offspring.”

Kibum gave a choked-off laugh. “All right,” he said. “I’ll do that. Is there anything else?”

Taemin hesitated. There  _was_  one more thing he wanted to say, but he probably shouldn’t say it. It would hurt Minho to hear, and that was never something Taemin had ever done deliberately, much as he’d made it happen all too frequently by accident.

But, well, Taemin felt that he was entitled to a little selfishness now, given what he was about do.

“Yeah,” he said, and sighed. “Tell him I love him too, okay?”

Kibum nodded wordlessly at that. He looked as if he were still struggling not to cry. Taemin brushed the pads of his thumbs gently over the pretty arch of Kibum’s cheekbones, memorizing the sensual feel of that smooth skin.

“Ready?” he asked. When Kibum nodded again, he added: “Can you kiss me while we… is that all right?”

Kibum nodded for a third time. Then he drew Taemin close. They kissed just as they had kissed before, with a fierce and burning desperation. Taemin’s eyes fluttered shut as they clung to each other, the kiss deepening in intensity. Kibum, illusion though he was, felt warm and solid and realer than anything in Taemin’s arms. Taemin stroked his tongue through the willing heat of Kibum’s mouth, aching for this kiss to last forever, wanting to drown in the pleasure of Kibum’s touch for a delirious eternity.

It was not to be. Even as they kissed, reality began to shift and warp. Taemin felt Kibum’s soul flow against his own, the sensation a giddy rush of intangible memory. He had never done this while awake, and it was not a comfortable sensation at all. It pulled at parts of him he hadn’t even known  _existed_.

 _Go,_  thought Taemin to Kibum, as their souls merged and twined.  _Go and be happy. Be free._

 _I'll miss you_ , Kibum thought back, as they shared this mind-dance one last time.  _I'll miss you so much._

The shift was over almost as soon as it had begun, and the end result was familiar. Taemin opened his eyes and found himself in the tiger enclosure, hundreds of pounds heavier and covered in thick orange and black fur. It was just like all the other times he and Kibum had accidentally dreamed themselves into each other’s bodies, only this time it was deliberate, and  _final_.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head. It was very odd to feel different muscles being used for the effort. He let his changed sight focus past the metal bars of the cage and saw Kibum standing there, in a human shell again. Taemin’s former shell.

Taemin growled quietly, a soft rumble of noise to let Kibum know that the switch had been successful on his end. It was strange to be seeing his body from tiger eyes, rather than the other way around. Was his frame really that small, or was it just tiger perception kicking in?

Kibum said something to him, but Taemin could not understand what. The words did not process properly through a tiger’s hearing. Taemin cocked his head to the side instead and twitched his ears in what he hoped indicated confusion.

It seemed to work. Kibum sighed and bowed his head, then waved a farewell and left. Taemin watched him go. Then he lowered his head back onto his paws with a wheezy grunt. He felt exhausted and numb inside. The tiger body felt wrong around him, like an itch he couldn’t quite scratch.

He closed his eyes then, and fell asleep.

~~~

  
For the first time in a long time, he did not dream of tigers.

~~~

  
It was very annoyingly noisy outside, and also much too hot.

Hordes of children swarmed everywhere, their camp counselors yelling loudly as they tried to wrangle their small charges into some semblance of order. Taemin lazed in the mud near the pond in his enclosure and ignored the mayhem. Summer was always like this.

Taemin hated camp days. Then again, he hated most days. They were boring, and sleep was no escape. He dreamed when he slept, and the dreams were often nightmares. He woke from them with the stink of scorched flesh lingering in his nostrils, and the aching memory of Kibum’s kisses and Minho’s smile lurking in the jagged spaces of his mind.

He let out a whuff of a sigh and wriggled a bit further into the coolness of the mud. Busy days were the  _worst_. He couldn’t wait until the end of afternoon came and the camp children at least would go home. Maybe then the noise volume would decrease. That would be nice.

He supposed he ought to get up and do something interesting. The zookeepers always rewarded him with treats if he put on a show for the crowds of visitors. But Taemin stayed where he was. It was too hot to bother with tricks. Key the tiger would be a boring sight today.

Perhaps he was drowsy enough now for sleep to bring only dreams of mundane things. It was worth trying for, anyway. It wasn’t as if he had anything else to do.

Taemin yawned, tail flicking absently at the small cloud of flies buzzing about the mud puddle he was sprawled in. Then he rolled over and stretched, ignoring the excited cries from the onlookers at this sudden movement. These cries turned disappointed very quickly when he proceeded to go back to snoozing in the summer sun. Taemin paid the crowd’s disappointment no mind. Their reactions didn’t bother him. He’d had years to become numb to such things.

Gradually, he let himself risk drifting back to sleep.

~~~

  
It was a Wednesday morning and, just like always, Taemin was at the zoo.

~~~

 _staring at the ceiling in the dark  
same old empty feeling in your heart  
'cause love comes slow and it goes so fast_

 _well you see her when you fall asleep  
but never to touch and never to keep  
'cause you loved her too much  
and you dived too deep_

 _well you only need the light when it's burning low  
only miss the sun when it starts to snow  
only know you love her when you let her go_


End file.
